If yours is a business that takes online payments, you have a new nightmare to haunt you: e-skimming, a fraud scheme brought to us by the benefits, and dangers, of technology.
The FBI has issued a warning on e-skimming, which works like this: someone hacks your business or personal computer, inserts malicious code that enables them to see and record credit card numbers or other personal or business information, and then robs you, your company, or your customers, or sells the information.
The thief receives the credit card data at the same time as the company.
This can happen without either the company or consumer being aware the code is infecting the system. Anti-virus protections may not spot it, either. The attackers get access through various means, among them through a successful phishing trip into a company computer, or even through a third-party vendor.
The FBI’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) suggests several steps to safeguard against e-skimming, among them:
See the FBI news release here.
As that list is examined it’s noticed that these safeguards include things that in the 21st century are exceedingly hard to avoid, such as e-mail attachments, which are transmitted constantly for innumerable reasons. Stopping, checking, and verifying each one ranges from impractical to impossible.
However, that’s what gives cyber-thieves their opportunities.
Additionally, segmenting and segregating networks and functions means more time, planning, expense, and execution. To not throw up such barriers increases the probability that the nightmare of e-skimming will become real.
Until better defenses are erected, if malicious code is undetected, the FBI suggests checking personal records and billing statements to see if unauthorized purchases or transactions have occurred.
Another increasingly popular scam during the holidays or any time of year: gift card fraud. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) explains the attacks: “In a typical example, a victim receives a request from their management to purchase gift cards for a work-related function or as a present for a special personal occasion. The gift cards are then used to facilitate the purchase of goods and services which may or may not be legitimate.
“Some of these incidents are combined with additional requests for wire transfer payments as described in classic BEC (Business E-mail Compromise) scenarios.”
Between Jan. 1, 2017 and August 2018, there was a more than 1,200 percent increase in fraudulent gift card complaints, the IC3 said. Its suggestions for protecting yourself are:
In other words, don’t take the e-mail at face value. Confirm the request.
Of course, always present are the traditional types of accounting and business fraud that have been bedeviling companies as long as companies have existed.
investigative agencies of many types make their living overturning business accounting rocks and finding something bad underneath. Imagine yourself or an employee in a news story or news release being cited as committing any one of the following acts:
Among the outcomes of appearing in these or similar notices are damage to a business, embarrassment, personal or financial ruin, or imprisonment. The list above doesn’t include the IRS or the daunting list of other enforcement agencies.
New or old, technologically sophisticated or simply executed, fraud has, and always will, be among us. The best defense is awareness of the threat and effective defenses to counter them, recognizing that the threat is like a constantly-mutating virus, requiring new and more formidable defenses.
Therefore, include in your arsenal accounting professionals and technical support experts whose job it is to defend against the latest threats while being able to recognize the more traditional fraud varieties. Otherwise, you could be skimmed, gift-carded, suffer embezzlement, or worse.
There are a lot of rocks out there, and a lot of bad people lurking under them.