Fraud represents a potentially devastating financial risk to your business. All accountants, business directors and employees need to be aware of how to identify fraud and what steps need to be taken to avoid it. This means it’s hugely important to not only acknowledge that fraud exists, but to understand where you as a business might be vulnerable. It’s then imperative to create comprehensive fraud response plan should you get caught out.
What are Phishing, Vishing and Smishing scams?
There’s a reason why cyber security has become such a hot topic in the news in recent years. Fraudulent activity has never been more prevalent, with phishing, vishing, and smishing scams becoming much harder to recognise. With businesses, as well as individuals, being targeted, educating employees on the risks and what to look out for it hugely important. But what exactly are these scams?
- Phishing scams: these are emails posing as reputable companies, or even colleagues, in order to encourage individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
- Vishing scams: these are fraudulent phone calls or voice messages posing as reputable companies in order to encourage individuals to reveal personal information, such as bank details and credit card numbers.
- Smishing scams: these are SMS messages that aim to trick individuals into downloading malware onto his mobile phone devices.
Fraudulent activity is now much harder to recognise, with scammers cleverly disguising themselves as colleague, reputable businesses, banks, and friends. All staff need to be made aware of these risks, and they need to be clear in how they respond to and report a potential fraudulent email, phone call or text.
What is internal business fraud?
Unfortunately, fraud can also exist within the business, with employees able to steal money from your business should you not have the correct structures in place to not only prevent such activity, but recognise it as soon as possible.
Internal business fraud can also include:
- Asset misappropriation – including theft of cash, taking of cash before recording revenues, etc.
- Cheque fraud – including theft of, duplicating of, or tampering with company cheques.
- Misuse of accounts – including wire transfer fraud, false credit notes, etc.
- Procurement – including altering purchase orders, forging signatures, etc.
- False Payment Requests – including false payment instructions, etc.
- Billing schemes – including over-billing, ‘pay and returns’ schemes, etc.
- Inventory and Fixed assets – including inventory theft, false sales, theft of assets, etc.
- Payroll – including fictitious employees, falsified work hours, etc.
The first step in our fraud module encourages businesses to identify the risk, and to understand the scale of the risk. This will then assist in the development of a comprehensive risk strategy that can be implemented across the business and reviewed over time.
Protect your business against fraud
The Risk Dashboard fraud module covers a number of key elements that could easily prove invaluable to any business owner or accountant. Ensuring company accounts are protected, ensuring employees are informed, and ensuring that potential threats are avoided and reported are paramount for reducing the risk of fraud across the company.
For more information on how Risk Dashboard can assist in the protection of your business against fraud, please contact Neil Campbell, Commercial Director on neil.campbell@riskdashboard.co.uk or info@riskdashboard.co.uk!
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