Every business wants to prevent fraud and financial crime. These days, cyber criminals are becoming smarter and savvier seemingly every day. Safely managing business cash flow can seem like a daunting challenge. But with the right knowledge and tools in your cybersecurity toolkit, you can help keep your company’s money safe.
Understanding Business Email Compromise
Business Email Compromise (BEC) is one of the most common types of payment and business fraud. With BEC, fraudsters disguise themselves as a trusted person, such as a business owner or C-level executive, to trick a recipient into transferring money via wire transfer, ACH, or check. BEC may also take on the form of a fake invoice from a compromised supplier or vendor email address.
The most daunting aspect of BEC scams is that once a transaction has occurred, it’s often very difficult, if not impossible, to retrieve lost funds. Here are some ways to help you avoid becoming a victim:
Preventing Unauthorized Transactions
With check and ACH fraud on the rise, Sandy Spring Bank offers fraud prevention tools that help businesses take a proactive approach to unauthorized transactions.
From high-tech counterfeit checks to simple forgeries, business checking accounts are hot targets for fraudsters. Check Positive Pay is a treasury management product available to all commercial clients that serves as early warning fraud detection system. It allows you to electronically share your company’s check register for all written checks including precise specifications such as amount, serial number, check date, etc. Based on this information, the bank will only pay the checks listed on the register according to these specifications.
ACH Positive Pay works similarly. It allows you to prevent unauthorized electronic debits from posting to your business account by controlling who you accept ACH transactions from. Users can also create filters to allow specific transaction types to post (such as payroll or other standard payments) automatically while also preventing other transaction types, including those over a certain amount.
Client Advocacy
Fraud isn’t always easy to spot. In fact, people often think they’ll immediately recognize a scam email because of misspelled words, fake email addresses, bogus links, and more. But hackers are smart and spotting a scam email is getting more challenging. To help you step up your defenses, here are three common types of scams to watch out for:
Unfortunately, fraud continues to be rampant throughout the world. That’s why it’s so important to be sure business owners and employees are aware of the methods and tactics cyber criminals use to trick individuals into unknowingly transferring company funds, paying bogus invoices, or committing wire fraud. At Sandy Spring Bank, we’re here to help our clients protect their business and keep their money safe from scammers.
If you suspect that you’ve been a victim of fraud, immediately contact the Commercial Business Center at Sandy Spring Bank at 866.867.1570. You should also file a complaint with either the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) or your local FBI field office.
Learn more about ways to protect you and your information. »