Why Wire Fraud is Still a Serious Threat

Wire fraud is one of the biggest cyber-threats companies face today. The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) found that cases of attempted or actual payments fraud increased from 60 percent to 82 percent between 2013 and 2018. And these attacks come at a severe cost; between 2016 and 2019 Business Email Compromise led to more than $26 billion in losses, according to FBI reports.
Businesses across the globe need to ramp up efforts to address this rapidly growing threat. NINJIO COO/CISO Matt Lindley recently wrote in a U.S. Cybersecurity Magazine article that, “the digitization of financial services and transactions is only going to continue surging in the coming years, so it has never been more important for employees to know how to prevent cybercriminals from interdicting these transactions and stealing vast sums of money.”
Lindley advised that the solution starts with greater awareness of and education on these different cyberattack vectors. In the case of wire fraud, cybercriminals have multiple strategies for social engineering and manipulating employees into sending wire transfers:

Hacking into a victim’s email account (usually someone in a position of authority who’s authorized to handle a company’s finances) and use it to send fraudulent messages requesting wire transfers.

Impersonating a vendor or another entity the company does business with

Convincing an employee to transfer funds by insisting that the money needs to be transferred immediately to avoid incurring some kind of penalty.

Creating fake accounts designed to resemble their legitimate counterparts.

Employees should be trained to verify the identity of fund recipients, identify suspicious elements of wire transfer requests, and understand who to contct when something feels off. To learn more about spotting and thwarting these attacks, read the full article here.