The Impacts of Cyber Fraud
Article By: Deirdre Tumm
Cyber fraud, ransomware, and phishing are becoming increasingly popular and are impacting both agencies and clients alike. We can combat these variations of fraud by being diligent about validating who we are taking payment instructions from and that the change request is in fact authentic.
When you receive a request via text, email, phone, or mail to change financial information specific to payment data, what steps are you taking to validate that this request is authentic? Are you contacting your trusted source and verbally validating this request is accurate? Do not utilize a phone number of this payee supplied via email, text, phone, or email. Utilize the valid and authenticated phone number that you have on file for this payee. Only once you have verbally confirmed that the changes in payee financial data has been validated should you amend the payee payment data on your end.
When you receive a request from management within your organization that involves a request for the movement of funds (a wire transfer request, an electronic funds transfer, etc.) these type of requests should be verbally confirmed by management prior to processing the same.
In a world where sense of urgency is coveted, emphasis needs to be placed on slowing down enough to ask ourselves if communications such as those referenced above was anticipated and taking the time to verbally validate that the change being requested of you can be confirmed.
Deirdre Tumm is the senior treasury management officer for Security Financial Bank. Deirdre uses her cash management expertise to seamlessly guide SFB's insurance agency clients with their depository needs and specialized business services. Some of those services include remote deposit capture, Positive Pay, and ACH services.
