Protecting Your Business is Smart for Business
If you own a business, it’s more important than ever that you remain vigilant against common threats, like:
- Unauthorized access to your bank accounts by outsiders or even employees
- Compromised IDs and passwords
- Corporate account takeovers
- Email compromise
Corporate Account Takeover
Cyber thieves have learned that stealing from a business is much more lucrative than defrauding consumers one at a time. They entice an employee to click a link in an unsolicited email, or to visit an infected website. That’s all it takes to plant malware on your computer system, learn your online banking credentials, and gather other sensitive info across your network. These thieves particularly target small- to medium-sized businesses that use ACH or wire services and may not reconcile accounts every day. From there, it’s a simple matter for them to drain your accounts to a local account, which in turn immediately wires the funds out of reach. Don’t take any risks. Make sure any wire requests are personally validated.
Here are some ways to protect your business against corporate account takeover:
- Reconcile all banking transactions on a daily basis
- Initiate ACH and wire transfer payments under dual control, with a transaction originator and a separate transaction authorizer
- Be suspicious of emails purporting to be from a financial institution, government department or other agency—or even your own boss—requesting account information, account verification or banking access credentials such as usernames, passwords, PIN codes and similar information as well as email requests to send a wire or ACH transaction
- Be wary of emails purporting to be from a colleague or your boss requesting a wire transfer. Be sure to call that person to verify the wire request before moving funds. Always call a number known to you, not a number in an email
- Create strong passwords with at least 10 characters that include a combination of mixed case letters, numbers and special characters
- Clear your browser cache in order to eliminate copies of web pages that have been stored on your hard drive
Do you suspect your account has been taken over? Here’s what to do:
- Immediately cease all activity on computer systems that may be compromised, and disconnect from your network
- Contact Liberty Bank at (888) 570-0773 so we can disable your accounts, review recent transactions and authorizations, or open new account(s) as appropriate
- File a police report
Other Ways You Can Protect Your Business
Consider taking the following steps to give your business more protection:
- Install a web filter to block employees from accessing non-business websites
- Conduct all your banking business on a stand-alone computer that is not enabled for email or web browsing and turn this computer off when not in use
- Review your bank statements regularly
- Limit the number of employees who have access to your banking information and accounts
- Segregate account reconciliation responsibilities and assign them to specific employees
- Ensure that operating systems and anti-virus programs are up to date
- Install firewall software
- Set alerts, directed toward an owner or senior manager
Want to sharpen your knowledge further? Learn how you can protect yourself from scams.