Establish control
Assign an Incident Lead, use trusted communication channels and engage the right business, legal, insurance and operational stakeholders.
Security & Risk
Business Email Compromise Response and Prevention
Business email compromise can lead to financial fraud, information exposure, credential theft or access to connected systems. Effective response requires coordinated leadership, communications and technical action.
A coordinated response matters
BEC is more than an email problem
Business email compromise can begin with a deceptive message or misuse of a trusted digital identity, then develop into payment fraud, unauthorized disclosure, credential theft or access to connected systems. A successful response therefore needs business and technical teams working from the same facts and under clear incident leadership.
Contain and investigate
Secure the identity, revoke access, remove persistence, preserve evidence and determine whether the compromise reached other systems or people.
Respond to confirmed impact
Follow every applicable response path for fraudulent messages, financial activity, exposed information, connected systems and affected third parties.
Recover and strengthen
Verify the account and endpoint, restore access carefully, monitor for recurrence and turn confirmed findings into practical control improvements.
This overview is general guidance. Incident response should be adapted to the organization’s environment, contractual commitments, applicable laws, legal counsel and cyber-risk insurance requirements.
Impact response workflow
One incident. Multiple response paths.
Confirmed impacts may activate more than one response path at the same time. Communication and reporting continue from activation through recovery and closure.
Supporting response workflows
Communication and technical response run in parallel
Once the impact is understood, communication and technical response continue as coordinated workstreams. The communication path controls internal and external messaging, while the technical path contains, investigates, remediates and validates the environment.
Preventing recurrence
Turn the incident into stronger controls
The post-incident review should address both the technical compromise and the business process that allowed a fraudulent request to succeed. Priorities may include stronger identity controls, email protection, independent transaction verification, endpoint detection, employee awareness, partner procedures and reducing unnecessary access.
Strengthen identityProtect emailVerify transactionsImprove detectionPrepare people & partnersReduce unnecessary exposure
Full Argus guide
Business Email Compromise Response and Prevention Guide
Download the full 9-page guide for detailed leadership and communication actions, technical containment and investigation, confirmed-impact response, recovery, prevention controls and official resources.