Be aware of the possibilities
We are seeing more and more instances where businesses of all sizes are being targeted by fraudsters. A targeted business may be being used as a “tool” to defraud other businesses such as suppliers. This can be illustrated by a fraud that is often attempted:
- Your business is contacted by email by a major supplier advising you that their bank account details have changed and all future payments to them should be made to the new bank account details included in the email.
- You follow the instructions and make future payments to the new bank account of the supplier.
- However, a reminder from the supplier for an overdue payment from your business brings to light the fact that their email system and database have been hacked into by fraudsters, who have managed to send an email to customers to direct payments to the supplier to a false bank account.
This fraud highlights the need for information security and for passwords to be restricted to key individuals and changed regularly.
If you receive a similar email to the one outlined above from a supplier, you should contact the supplier by telephone to confirm that what has been requested is correct.
Similarly, you should advise your customers that if they ever receive correspondence from your business indicating that bank account or payment details have changed or advising anything else out of the ordinary, then they should contact you by telephone to confirm that this is correct.