Business Email Compromise solution

Problem

Sensitive document verification should be simple, but in 2020 alone companies lost 1.8 Billion dollars in the US as a result of BEC attacks.

Solution

An email plug-in that allows professional users to certify and verify sensitive messages, from the comfort of their own email application.

Total to date

This is the total amount allocated to Business Email Compromise solution.

$40,000

Total funds requested

539

Total votes cast

₳77.2M

Votes yes

₳44.9M

Votes no

About this idea

I-Plan in detail:
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, working from home became the norm for most companies around the world. The shift from working in the office to working remotely has increased the vulnerability of users who became easier targets for cyber attacks, which partially explains the rise in Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks during the year 2020. BEC attacks are one type of phishing attack in which Cybercriminals spoof email accounts and send fraudulent emails impersonating CEOs, senior business executives, or even a trusted supplier and ask the victims to make payments on the attackers' bank accounts. On average BEC attacks cost victims 75,000 USD per complaint and so the need to be sure that a sensitive message received in your email is authentic and comes from a trusted source became even more crucial.
Currently, certification and validation of messages rely primarily on the use of solutions that are developed by centralized authorities; those authorities store message data and metadata on their databases and are always prone to attack by third-party malicious actors.
With that in mind, we want to develop a decentralized solution that allows users to authenticate and validate any type of message directly from the comfort of their own email address. The solution that we want to develop, will levy on the distributed and immutable nature of blockchain technology in addition to the Metadata features of Cardano to secure the exchange of sensitive messages, without the need for central authorities.
The solution architecture proposed will consist of an email plug-in, that will allow users to sign and verify any type of message, simply by recording the hash of the shared message on the Cardano chain. The plug-in will be developed to allow full decentralization of the application, through a built-in light wallet component that will let users interact directly with the Cardano chain without having to install any additional software.
The user will only interact with a central authority in three possible scenarios only:

To install the plug-in (the plug-in will also be available on application marketplaces)
To refill his account.
To ask for customer support.

Outside of these three possible scenarios, we aspire to fully decentralize the solution and allow users to interact directly with blockchain technology on a daily basis.
II-How does this create value to Cardano:

Building Becky on the Cardano blockchain network will introduce it to users from different professional backgrounds as a blockchain network that can be used to solve real-world problems. Thus bringing blockchain into the daily lives of millions of professionals and offering great exposure to the network, the coin, and the community in general.

III-Timeline:

We are in the process of developing the MVP and we are already in conversation with partner companies that are interested in testing the solution as means to solving their day-to-day problems. Hence our plan is:
1.Develop a solid MVP for an email plug-in for the most popular email applications(Outlook and Gmail).

Estimated time for initial development: 2 months
Estimated budget: We estimate that we will need around 21000 to 27000 USD to develop an MVP in Google script and .Net. in addition to setting up the basic database logic that will allow users to register, refill their accounts, sign and verify a message if they have not installed the plug-in and open support tickets when needed.

2.Deploy the MVP in partner companies for testing and improvement.

We ran the idea within our business partners and connections in the Netherlands and we have already cultivated the interest of parties that are willing to test the solution in their daily operation. We believe that this will offer us very valuable feedback from the typical users of this solution.
Estimated timeline: 2 months.
Focus group: 5 SMEs are willing to test the application.

3.Improve the solution according to market demand:
Following this testing period, we can further improve our software stack and assess the need to broaden the scope of the operation.
4. Introduce the solution on a commercial level:
After we have modified our solution according to the feedback from the market, we will introduce Becky to a larger test group commercially and keep monitoring the feedback from the market as we scale.

IV-Defining success:
Our goal is to develop a tool that will be used by normal business users in daily operations. For this reason, we want to develop our e-signature/verification tool with the most pleasant UI/UX possible. This is why we define our success by how easy it is to interact with our tool. To measure this we will initially build the app with our partner companies and get feedback directly from the market. We believe that if the tool is easy enough to use, user adoption will grow organically and also exponentially since one user on the app will introduce it to all of his counterparties. With that in mind, we hope to reach 50 SME based in the EU by end of the year
Additionally, we want to develop a solution that will have non-repudiation properties that will allow any party to know unequivocally the issuer of a message signed through the app, therefore offering an initial step towards a self-governed identity that is used to identify the issuer of a message.

V-Budget: