Business Email Compromise (BEC) is a form of targeted email fraud in which an attacker impersonates a trusted party, such as a chief executive, a supplier, or a colleague, to deceive an employee into transferring funds, paying a fake invoice, or releasing sensitive data. Unlike mass phishing, BEC is low-volume and highly tailored, which makes it harder to spot.
BEC matters because it exploits trust rather than technical flaws, and the financial losses per incident are often large. Attackers commonly use three techniques: spoofing your exact domain in the From address, registering a lookalike domain that reads almost identically, or altering only the visible display name while the underlying address differs.
Direct domain spoofing is the variant you can shut down with email authentication. Publishing DMARC at an enforcement policy, backed by aligned SPF and DKIM, stops messages that forge your domain from reaching inboxes. DMARC aggregate reports also reveal who is attempting to send as you.
To reduce BEC risk, get your domain to p=reject, monitor reports for unauthorised sources, and pair this with staff awareness and payment-verification controls. DMARC Engine handles the enforcement work for you so spoofed mail using your own domain is rejected.
Check it on your domain
- Lookalike Domain Checker: find registered lookalike variations of your domain.
- Spoofable Status Badge: generate an embeddable badge that shows your domain's live DMARC status.
- DMARC Checker: look up and validate a domain's DMARC record and policy.