March 9 , 2015

March is ‘Fraud Prevention Month’ – is your business protected?

Toronto, ON-- Cyber-attacks, data breaches, and losses of consumer information are dominating the headlines, making ‘Fraud Prevention Month’ more relevant than ever before. These attacks and related cyber security-based threats pose a mounting risk for Canadian businesses of all sizes. It's no longer a question of if an attack will occur, but when. In fact, 60 per cent of KPMG C-Suite survey respondents reported recently increasing their budget to secure data against the threat of cyber-attacks.

As Fraud Prevention Month kicks off, KPMG has identified three themes which are particularly applicable to Canadian business.

Executive impersonation fraud

In these scams, criminals use email to impersonate a company executive and trick the organization's finance team into transferring money to a fake account. Often, the habits of the executive are studied by criminals who use irregular circumstances to make out of character transactions and urgent requests for funds.

Financial institution fraud            

Banks and financial institutions face a myriad of complex cyber security challenges including compliance pressures, emerging threats and material risks. These challenges are compounded by the rising risk posed to banks by third party data loss incidents that force financial institutions to assume the costs incurred through the cancelling and reissuing of credit and debit cards.

Small and medium enterprise fraud

Small businesses regularly focus on the bare minimum to meet compliance requirements and stay in business, despite being just as vulnerable to hackers and cyber-attacks as larger organizations. Unlike larger organizations, these enterprises are often unable to recover from the financial and reputational repercussions of an incident.