We hope you are staying safe. As most companies move their employees to remote working environments during the Covid-19 pandemic, unfortunately, unsavory actors are using this as an opportunity to target businesses with phishing, and other financial scams. The FBI anticipates a rise in wire fraud activities during the Covid-19 pandemic so you and your team need to be aware of, and prepared for such activity.
The World Health Organization (WHO), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Better Business Bureau have all issued warnings in recent weeks about the uptick in criminal scams.
How wire transfer fraud schemes operate:
In a typical scenario, the fraudster emails the finance team of the company via the email address of a “legitimate sounding” vendor (domain name will be deceptively similar with an extra letter in between or a “-“ in-between), asking them to change the destination for wire transfer payments for paying invoices. Typical red flags for such requests include urgency, and requests to send payments to a personal bank account.
We also recommend:
- Employing strong antivirus protection on every employee’s home/remote computer. You should also consider using a professional password manager software.
- Educating employees not to click on links or open email attachments from unknown or unverified sources to prevent downloading an (electronic) virus.
- Verify the identity of any company, charity, or individual contacting you independently.
- Ignoring offers for vaccines, cures, or treatments. Health authorities won’t be selling these.
We are always happy to share more on our best practices, and the AI-based edge protection software, that we use internally- just ask! Be well and stay safe!
