Fight the battle against payments fraud

The best way to prevent fraud is to prepare for it. Here’s how.

In the digital age, a cyberattack is like a natural disaster – a persistent and unpredictable threat. Eighty-two percent of U.S. organizations were targets of payments fraud, according to the 2020 Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) Payments Fraud Survey Report.

What’s the best way to prevent getting hit by a payments fraud scam?

“Know your organization’s vulnerabilities and prepare for attacks,” says Dan Kautz, a vice president with Global Treasury Management at U.S. Bank. “It’s not necessarily the amount of money sitting in a company’s account that makes them a target; it’s their weaknesses,” Kautz says.

Those weaknesses include a lack of IT infrastructure, smaller staffs and fewer controls – all of which attract cybercriminals. Although criminals’ tactics constantly evolve, business email compromise (BEC) is a constant threat, with 75 percent of organizations having experienced it in 2019.

Payments fraud continues to rise

Although it fell after the Great Recession, payments fraud once again is on the rise. The number of organizations that say they’ve experienced attempted or actual payments fraud settled in at 81 percent in 2019, after peaking at 82 percent in 2018. 

The persistent realities of BEC

“These are legitimate payments, and that makes them very difficult to detect,” Kautz says of BEC attacks, wherein criminals persuade employees to initiate wire, check or credit card payments by sending fraudulent emails. The emails appear to be from genuine customers, vendors or executives. These sophisticated scams also include requests for personally identifiable information (PII) or Wage and Tax Statement (W-2) forms for employees.

However, while this overall loss was large, individual organization losses were less significant. In 2019, less than half of organizations say they suffered a financial loss because of BEC.

The greater threat to those organizations comes from the theft of personal and confidential information. Damages from these thefts can be difficult to measure, ranging from financial penalties to legal and regulatory actions.

BEC scams grow and evolve

Increasingly, criminals harvest personally identifiable information through the web and social media and use it to execute sophisticated BEC scams. They pose as trusted executives or vendors to either initiate unauthorized payments or change payment information to intercept disbursements. 

Percent of organizations that experienced attempted and/or actual payments fraud with these payments methods in 2019

The percent of organizations that experienced attempted and/or actual payments fraud in 2019 with checks was 74 percent, with wire transfers was 40 percent, with corporate or commercial credit cards was 34 percent, with ACH debits was 33 percent, and with ACH credits was 22 percent.

Checks remain primary target

Although businesses operate in a digital world, checks remain the primary target. This is thanks to their prevalence and technological advancements that have made it easier to create more convincing forgeries.

How to protect your organization

Kautz recommends that your organization take the following steps to help protect itself:

• Provide comprehensive training: All employees should receive training to help them identify and respond to potential attacks.
• Institute physical, digital and procedural controls: Require the use of dual approval for all payments. Establish a dedicated workstation through which all payments must be executed and limit employee access to personal email, all of which will limit your organization’s exposure to potential threats.
• Promote mindfulness: Executives should empower and encourage employees to think carefully, ask questions and verify, before executing transactions.
• Share personal information sparingly: Executives should avoid sharing biographical and direct contact information online, where cybercriminals can harvest it for use in BEC attacks.

“Companies read about fraud in the newspaper, but they think it won’t happen to them,” Kautz says. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. All it takes is one bad email or one wrong click.”

Don’t wait until your organization experiences a fraud attempt. Take time now to search for gaps in your fraud prevention program. Our payments fraud prevention best practices and fraud prevention checklist can help:

• Payments fraud prevention best practices
• Fraud prevention checklist

U.S. Bank is committed to helping you meet your treasury management needs, including fraud prevention. To learn more, contact a U.S. Bank relationship manager or treasury management consultant.