Fraud Prevention month: 3 cyber-security areas to watch

TORONTO—Cyber-attacks, data breaches and losses of consumer information pose a mounting risk for Canadian businesses of all sizes. Indeed, 60 per cent of KPMG executive-level survey respondents reported increasing their budget to secure data against the threat of cyber-attacks.

Toronto-based business consultants KPMG has identified three categories of scams 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 myriad 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.