Publishing giant Nikkei has reported they have lost $29million in an email fraud.

In a press release they said:

In late September 2019, an employee of Nikkei America, Inc. (New York City, United States) (“Nikkei America”), a subsidiary of Nikkei Inc. (“Nikkei”), had transferred approximately 29 million United States dollars (approximately 3.2 billion Japanese Yen) of Nikkei America funds based on fraudulent instructions by a malicious third party who purported to be a management executive of Nikkei.

Email fraud is a popular means of attack against businesses of all sizes.  Larger organisations are more likely to experience targeted attacks proceeded by phishing campaigns to gather information – as the larger potential pay-off makes it worth the criminal’s time to gather the intelligence.

The losses at Nikkei come shortly after another Japanese giant, Toyota Boshoku, reported that they had fallen for a similar fraud and paid away 4 billion yen.

Office 365 now includes new features to help defend against impersonation based phishing attacks.

While technology to detect the faked emails is helpful, staff training is also a vital defence against so called CEO Fraud email scams.