Executives' email accounts are valuable targets because they have access to the organization's most sensitive information and authority. Their emails carry weight, and their requests can be fulfilled quickly and without questioning. This authority creates opportunities for business email compromise (BEC) attacks, where cybercriminals impersonate executives to authorize fraudulent wire transfers, approve fake invoices, or request sensitive employee data. According to the FBI IC3 2024 Annual Report, BEC attacks resulted in 21,442 complaints and losses of $2,770,151,146 in 2024 alone, making it the second-highest loss category after investment fraud.
Executives often have high-value contacts, including board members, investors, partners, and other industry leaders. Compromising one executive's account can provide a launching pad for attacks against other organizations, multiplying the potential damage.
Related: Why BEC is today’s biggest email threat
Executives often represent weak links in organizational security for several reasons. Their busy schedules and heavy workloads create pressure to work quickly, sometimes at the expense of security best practices. Recent research confirms this vulnerability. According to Sustaining Cyber Awareness: The Long-Term Impact of Continuous Phishing Training and Emotional Triggers, at least 35.5% of employees fell for a phishing attempt at least once during a 12-month study period. Without proper training, organizations face even higher baseline vulnerability, the same study found that initial compromise rates reached 8.5% in the first month before training interventions began.
Additionally, executives frequently work outside traditional office environments; traveling internationally, working from home, or conducting business in airports and hotels. These locations often involve unsecured Wi-Fi networks, shared workspaces, and other environments where sensitive communications can be intercepted or observed.
According to TechRadar, the Cofense Phishing Defense Center detected one malicious email every 42 seconds in 2024, with email-based scams jumping 70% year-over-year. This increase is due to AI's ability to mimic tone, spoof internal emails, and personalize messages with impressive accuracy.
The FBI IC3 2024 Annual Report documented 193,407 phishing/spoofing complaints in 2024, representing the highest complaint count across all crime types. The direct losses from phishing totaled $70,013,036.
Spear phishing remains the most prevalent threat, with attackers creating personalized emails that reference real colleagues, ongoing projects, or industry-specific concerns. These messages often create urgency, pressuring executives to act without careful consideration.
As TechRadar reports, AI-generated phishing emails now feature perfect grammar, accurate formatting, and realistic sender addresses. These messages often impersonate C-suite executives, reply within existing email threads, and use lookalike domains such as "@consultant.com."
What makes these AI-powered attacks dangerous is that they eliminate the traditional warning signs security training has taught employees to recognize. TechRadar notes that "AI-generated content lacks the telltale signs that previously gave phishers away, such as typos, spelling mistakes and awkward phrasing, often clues that suggest English might not be the sender's first language."
Even more concerning are polymorphic phishing campaigns, which TechRadar describes as "constantly-changing attacks [that] modify their content in real time to evade signature-based security tools. Subject lines, sender details, and text all shift dynamically, which makes detection with traditional filters all but impossible."
Learn more: What are hyper-personalized AI phishing attacks?
Research from Sustaining Cyber Awareness reveals that attackers are moving away from obvious pressure tactics. The study found that "traditional fear- or urgency-based appeals appear to be losing persuasive power, possibly reflecting growing organizational resilience and awareness through repeated training."
Instead, modern phishing attacks exploit psychological vulnerabilities. Messages that are framed around helping colleagues, supporting company initiatives, or contributing to team efforts are effective at bypassing employee scrutiny. Similarly, messages appearing to originate from internal sources showed success rates, highlighting how attackers leverage organizational trust.
The research found that "emails incorporating two or more high-impact cues, such as altruism combined with an internal email source and personalization framing, achieved markedly higher compromise rates," with success rates up to 15% higher than less sophisticated attempts.
CEO fraud, a specific type of BEC attack, involves criminals impersonating chief executives to authorize fraudulent transactions. An email appearing to come from the CEO to the CFO requesting an urgent wire transfer for a confidential acquisition can bypass normal approval processes, especially if the timing aligns with known travel schedules or board meetings.
Credential harvesting attacks use fake login pages mimicking familiar services like Microsoft 365, Gmail, or cloud storage platforms. An executive clicking a malicious link might unknowingly enter their credentials into a fraudulent site, immediately handing over account access to attackers.
Learn more: Top credential harvesting techniques
The FBI IC3 2024 Annual Report revealed that total cyber crime losses reached $16.6 billion in 2024, representing a 33% increase from 2023. Of the 859,532 total complaints received, 256,256 reported actual financial losses, with an average loss of $19,372 per incident.
Business email compromise alone accounted for $2.77 billion in losses, a figure that has remained consistently above $2.7 billion annually for the past three years (2022: $2.74 billion; 2023: $2.95 billion; 2024: $2.77 billion).
Furthermore, individuals aged 60 and older, a demographic that includes many executives and board members, suffered. According to the FBI IC3 2024 Annual Report, this age group filed 147,127 complaints and lost $4.885 billion in 2024, representing a 43% increase in losses from 2023. Within this demographic, 3,300 BEC complaints resulted in $385 million in losses.
However, the FBI's Recovery Asset Team, through its Financial Fraud Kill Chain program, successfully froze $561.6 million in fraudulent transactions in 2024 from 3,020 complaints, achieving a 66% success rate. This shows the benefit of reporting and response when executive accounts are compromised.
Protecting executive communications requires a multi-layered approach combining technology, training, and policy. Advanced email filtering solutions using artificial intelligence and machine learning can identify suspicious messages before they reach executive inboxes. These systems analyze sender patterns, linguistic anomalies, and behavioral indicators that suggest phishing or impersonation attempts.
Paubox Inbound Security exemplifies this approach. Its generative AI analyzes tone, sender behavior, message intent, and historical communication patterns to surface hidden threats before they reach inboxes.
Sustaining Cyber Awareness research documented a 52% reduction in phishing susceptibility within six to eight months of implementing continuous training programs. Even more encouraging, the study found that approximately 70% of participants who fell for a phishing attempt once did not repeat the unsafe behavior after receiving immediate feedback and remedial training.
These sessions should go beyond generic phishing awareness to address threats specifically targeting leadership, including impersonation tactics, social engineering techniques, and the unique risks associated with their roles. Given the AI-powered attacks, training must emphasize that professional appearance and perfect grammar are no longer reliable indicators of legitimacy. As TechRadar advises, employees should "focus on context, timing, and content rather than how 'professional' it looks."
Organizations should implement verification protocols for high-risk requests. A simple policy requiring verbal confirmation for any wire transfer request over a certain threshold, or any unusual request coming via email, can prevent fraud attempts. TechRadar reinforces this approach: "If an email claims to be from a coworker or executive, double-check using known contact methods before taking action."
Public posts about travel, projects, or business relationships give attackers context they can weaponize in believable spear-phishing campaigns.
Periods of organizational change create urgency, confidentiality, and unfamiliar contacts that attackers exploit to bypass verification processes.
Assistants frequently manage calendars, invoices, and communications, making them secondary targets for impersonation or lateral attacks.