A Good Impersonator! Who’s your favorite impressionist? Kate McKinnon? Angela Hoover? Jim Meskimen? Impressionists, also known as impersonators or mimics, make us laugh with their uncanny imitation of famous politicians and celebrities. Dana Carvey’s long-ago take on GHW Bush was classic (“start with a little Mr. Rogers and add John Wayne”), and his Jimmy Stewart … What’s Worse than a Bad Impersonator?
Pesky Passwords Ask your IT chief about the weakest link in your organization’s cybersecurity, and you will receive a quick answer: employees. In cyberspace, passwords guard access to systems, email accounts and websites. Like the speakeasies of old, you need to know the password to get in. But with the ubiquity of password authentication, people … 9 Ways to Strengthen the Weak Link in Cybersecurity
If you have been working in or with accounts payable for very long, you are savvy. You know that crooks look for ways to get some of your organization’s money. It’s not easy to scam you. But what about staff? Do they fully comprehend how fraud is a fact of business life? Anyone working in … Don’t Click That Link!
Failure to Follow Controls It happened again. This time, a county government in New Mexico electronically paid $447,372 in nine different disbursements to a criminal. The alleged fraudster may be a Kenyan, but he wasn’t posing as a prince trying to get a fortune out of the country. Instead, he was a resident of Rochester, … Are You Disciplined in Preventing Fraud?
Appearances and Vendor Payments One of the most iconic scenes in a Hollywood heist movie comes near the end of Ocean’s Eleven. The “team” minus Danny Ocean lean against the balustrade in front of the Bellagio on the Las Vegas strip, quietly gazing at the fountains as Debussy’s beautiful Claire de Lune plays. Then one … Falling for the Illusion of Cybercriminals Will Cost You
ACH has steadily grown, while check payments are declining. Seventy-eight percent of organizations use ACH for some vendor payments. And while 82 percent of organizations still make some payments by check, according to a survey by the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP), the volume of checks by businesses has been steadily declining. According to the Federal … ACH Rising: What It Means for Vendor Information Management
With the pandemic-driven shift to remote work, many organizations moved more check payments to electronic formats, primarily ACH. That has necessitated vendors providing organizations with bank account information. Criminals, of course, go where the money is. And in the hasty shift to more electronic payments and, therefore, more vendors sharing bank account information, many organizations … Two Controls to Protect Vendor Bank Account Information
Do you have controls on managing vendor information and the vendor master file? Do you follow them? Experienced managers will say, “Duh.” However, others can use a reminder, so here it is. “With commerce comes fraud,” says Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder of Airbnb. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), in its 2020 Report to the … Why Vendor Controls and Confirmations Are Critical
Aggressive Cybercriminals Are Sophisticated; Security, IT and Finance Teams Must Be Tool People receive more than 120 emails at work per day on average. That’s a lot of emails. So, we categorize and strategize our email activity. But when we see an email from the boss, we tend to open it. And cybercriminals count on … NEW! Criminal Business Email Compromise: Are You Prepared?
IRS Adds Multi-factor Authentication As is widely known, organizations with 250 or more 1099s must file them electronically. To do so, they first must register on the IRS FIRE (Filing Information Returns Electronically) System site and apply for a Transmitter Control Code (TCC), which is necessary to file 1009s and other tax forms via the … 1099s: IRS FIRE System Adding Greater Security
Criminals Steal $650,000 from Non-profit Organization. It was a heartbreaking discovery. A non-profit organization paid out an amount equating to 26 percent of its annual revenue over a month in what the organization thought was legitimate project payments. When the executive director later spoke to the group that was to hire architects and engineers for … Anatomy of Business Email Compromise Fraud
Hackers continue a relentless barrage Last December, the U.S. government announced a major cyber breach by Russian hackers. Before we had understood fully the impact of that attack on 18,000 organizations and government agencies, we learned “holes” in Microsoft’s email software led to another compromise of 30,000 U.S. organizations. That attack was by Hafnium, a … Cyber Risk Statistics and the Need to Secure Sensitive Information
