How To Protect Your Business From Wire Transfer Fraud

It’s believed that most businesses today now accept wire transfers as a mode of payment and for good reason. Wire transfers are a convenient way to make and receive payments. Unfortunately, hackers see these types of transfers as an opportunity to profit from. 

As wire transfer fraud and scams, in general, can be financially crippling to any business, it’s important that your enterprise is properly guarded against them. Listed below are some ways you can protect your business from wire transfer fraud and the like.

1. Safeguard Your Data 

Your business is bound to deal with a lot of sensitive data when it operates daily. This very data is what a lot of hackers target. 

To start, knowing and understanding the differences between routing and account numbers is a must when protecting your business against wire transfer fraud. Whether it involves the data of your business or your customers, it’s vital that you keep both well protected. You can do this by a variety of means. The following are some examples that can help safeguard your business data:

• Keep access to data protected with passwords;
• Dispose of data properly and safely;
• Use a trusted cloud service;
• Protect personal work devices;
• Closely monitor wire transfers;
• Encrypt your data;
• Make sure that your data is properly backed up;
• Keep your systems updated; and
• Secure all wireless networks at your workplace.

2. Educate And Screen Your Employees

Because your employees are at the forefront of your business, it’s imperative that they know how to spot and single out potential frauds. As they’re usually responsible for collecting the payments from the transactions of your business, your personnel members are said to be a highly likely target for fraudsters to reach out to. It’d thus do you well to train your staff members to be vigilant against various scams like wire transfer frauds to name a few. 

To proceed with properly educating your team members, you can consider implementing a mandatory anti-fraud crash course while they receive their training. You may require your employees to take annual refresher seminars as well to ensure that they remain alert and on guard against fraud. 

It’s also crucial needless to say that your employees are trustworthy individuals. Conducting background checks and asking for clearances are effective ways to screen your workers and protect your business from workers with bad intentions. Practicing due diligence is key in making sound employment decisions. 

Overall, your workers are your greatest help and perhaps even the key in preventing fraud from taking hold of your company and its operations.   

3. Keep Your Technology Secure

Your computers and the various gadgets your business utilizes are also something hackers try to get and break into. Henceforth, it’s said to be important that you keep these very devices well-protected at all times. 

Consider installing all the latest anti-fraud software that protects against all sorts of scams and malware. Be sure to install firewalls on all devices too. 

Also, you should make it a point that access to these devices is strictly controlled and monitored. Only relevant and properly trained employees should be granted access to them and even then, their control over all the systems should be limited. 

Before accepting online modes of payment for your enterprise, it’d be wise to first ensure that the security of your devices is invulnerable.

4. Build A Security Web Against Wire Transfer Fraud And The Like

As wire transfers are a typical mode of payment used nowadays, your organization should have a system set in place to handle these sorts of payments safely. This can be done by thoroughly verifying each wire transfer transaction and creating a system to specially cater to this. 

There’s a multitude of technologies and services available today that can scrutinize your businesses’ financial transactions for or with you. Your employees can also play a huge helping role in protecting the business from fraud by making use of these systems and exercising caution when dealing with online payments. 

All in all, although wire transfer fraud and the like are a constant threat to any enterprise, there are still a variety of means entrepreneurs can combat them. 

5. Invest In Insurance

Lastly, although taking all these preventive measures can aid your business greatly in preventing fraud, they are not always foolproof. 

Investing in insurance can allow you to mitigate the losses your business incurs should the unfortunate happen and hackers succeed in fraud. Although fraud claims don’t necessarily guarantee all losses incurred from wire transfer frauds, they can still help your firm to have a security cushion to fall on. Insurance claims can give your company exactly that. 

Bottomline

Wire transfers are now a common way for businesses to receive payments for delivering their goods and services to consumers. Ultimately it provides convenience for both parties involved. Alas! Hackers and other online fraud criminals happened to realize this and continually try to target these types of transactions. 

Your business is never completely safe from fraud. But as they do say, prevention is the best remedy of all. Considering the points mentioned above and taking all the relevant cybersecurity safety measures can help protect your company from wire transfer fraud and the like.