The success of wire transfer fraud hinges on scammers’ ability to manipulate your staff to gain access to the structure of your financial approvals process. Foiling this longstanding scam depends on your ability to educate your team and strengthen your financial protocols. These steps can help you begin that process.
Strengthen your social engineering fraud prevention training.
Train staff to identify the hallmarks of a phishing attack—and implement protocols for reporting business email compromise (BEC) and other social engineering fraud tactics—as a frontline defense against wire transfer fraud.
Tighten your password processes.
If scammers fail to trick teammates, they often turn to password theft. To frustrate these efforts, implement strong password creation protocols, enact regularly scheduled employee password changes, and adopt multifactor authentication software.
Double down on your approval processes.
Dual control is a protocol requiring more than one authorized employee to approve any financial transfer. Pair it with mandatory follow-up communications—to verified emails and phone numbers—to increase your chances of halting fraudulent transfers.
Rethink your network architecture.
Segment off financial systems from other portions of your network and restrict approval privileges to a limited number of people.
Use new tech to fortify your defenses.
Consider implementing AI and machine learning to help your IT team proactively identify attempts at password cracking, alert you to suspicious logins, and quickly spot BEC attempts.
Turn to trusted providers.
Truist provides and maintains secure online banking transfer options, including wire transfers. Our efforts to ensure secure user ID and password protection for every transaction are just part of our commitment to fighting fraud.
