Money Transfer Fraud

Money transfer fraud can impact your business in a number of ways. Discover how to recognize, report and recover from this type of scam.

Step 1:Recognize

Red Flags of Money Transfer Fraud

When it comes to business money transfer fraud, there are a few key warning signs to be aware of:

  • Unexpected requests for money transfers
  • High-pressure tactics
  • Promises of high returns
  • Requests for confidential information, such as bank account numbers
  • Pressure to keep it a secret
  • Requests from someone you don’t normally do business with

Step 2:Immediate Actions

If you or one of your employees experience money transfer fraud, there’s a few actions you can take to move forward and secure your business:

  • Assess the extent of the damage. Determine how much money was transferred and what sensitive information was exposed.
  • Notify your bank or financial institution of the fraud immediately.
  • Change all passwords and security questions for all accounts that may have been compromised. This includes email accounts, social media accounts and any other online accounts that your employees use for business purposes.
  • Reach out to an attorney or legal organization for assistance.
  • Review your security procedures and make changes as necessary to prevent future incidents. This may include additional training for your employees, implementing new security software or hiring a security consultant to help you beef up your defenses.

Step 3:Report

Reporting any type of cybercrime, including money transfer fraud, is imperative to help others avoid being scammed. As a society, the more people that report online scams and fraud, the more national reporting data that is collected, and the better chance law enforcement has to catch the criminals and decrease cybercrime.

Step 4:Recover

How to Protect Your Business from Cyber Attacks

To protect your organization from cyber attacks:

  • Educate your employees about cyber threats. Search for free cybersecurity training videos on YouTube.
  • If you have the budget, consider investing in cybersecurity training for your employees to educate them about threats, and what they can do to help protect themselves and the business from cyber attacks.
  • Instruct your employees to report anything suspicious to you or their supervisor.
  • Implement security measures such as two-factor authentication and email filtering.
  • Monitor your organization’s email traffic for any suspicious activity.
  • Have a plan in place for what to do in the event of a phishing attack, so you can quickly contain the damage and minimize the impact on your business.

Take 5 Steps for Better Online Security

It’s important to strengthen your business’ online security to help avoid all cyber attacks. Take action to improve your digital posture by following these steps:

  1. Implement Multi Factor Authentication (MFA): Passwords are generally easy for scammers to crack, and even if you use strong passphrases, there’s still the possibility that a cybercriminal can obtain your passphrase in a data breach. Implementing MFA is a great way to maximize your security and ensure that you are the only one who can gain access to your accounts. MFA should be implemented on all accounts where it is available. Check your account’s security settings to see if it is something you can set up.
  2. Update Your Privacy Settings: Privacy settings allow you to control your personal information (name, address, phone number, date of birth, financial details, photos or videos, etc) and how that information is used. Review your privacy settings on all of your accounts including your social media accounts. Consider restricting who can see your friends list, contacts, photos and posts.
  3. Activate Automatic Updates: Automatic updates are a set of changes to an app, software or operating system that are automatically pushed by the developer to fix or improve it. Oftentimes, cybercriminals take advantage of security flaws to plant malicious software on your devices. By activating automatic updates, you will automatically patch security vulnerabilities to protect your data.
  4. Use a Password Manager or Create Strong Passphrases: A password manager is a software tool that securely stores all of your login credentials in one place, allowing you to create and manage strong, unique passwords for all of your accounts. If you are unable to afford a password manager, use strong passphrases. A passphrase is a combination of random words or a sentence that is much longer and more complex than a typical password. Using a passphrase instead of a password makes it much harder for hackers to guess or brute-force their way into your accounts.
  5. Learn the Elements of a Phishing Attempt: Familiarize yourself with the elements of a phishing email. Phishing emails tend to include a sense of urgency and multiple grammar and spelling errors. If they are asking you to reveal personal information, be suspicious. If you get a strange email, try contacting the company another way to confirm they sent that email. If the email is suspicious, mark it as spam.

TestimonialHear from Other Victims

Without Fightcybercrime.org, I don't know if I would have been able to react as quickly to protect my personal information.
Mary - Indianapolis, IN

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