Protecting your business against fraud: a practical guide

Ben Hay, Legal Director, and Frankie Williams, Associate, in our fraud team, have contributed an article to 9am Business offering a practical guide to protecting businesses against fraud.

The article notes that fraud is rarely a business’s top priority, yet even one successful attack can cause substantial financial loss, operational disruption and lasting reputational damage. With fraudsters increasingly using sophisticated technology to appear convincing, Ben and Frankie highlight the main threats businesses should be alert to:

• Email compromise and phishing, including intercepted invoices where bank details are altered to redirect payment.

• Invoice and payment diversion fraud, which can run in both directions: fraudsters posing as suppliers, or sending customers false payment instructions that appear to come from you.

• Impersonation scams, where a fraudster poses as a senior colleague or the IT team, increasingly using AI and voice cloning.

• Insider fraud, a particular risk where one trusted person controls invoicing, payments, payroll and the accounts with little supervision.

They explain that while the methods change, the weaknesses exploited rarely do: fraudsters rely on trust, urgency and a failure to follow procedure. Their practical steps include protecting accounts with strong passwords and multi-factor authentication, regular staff training (including on AI-generated content), independently verifying new or amended bank details, using dual authorisation for payments, identifying single points of failure, keeping systems secure, and preparing a fraud response plan so that staff can act quickly if an attack is suspected.

Ben and Frankie also stress the importance of building a culture in which staff feel able to challenge unusual requests, including from senior colleagues. As they conclude, effective fraud prevention does not always need complicated or expensive systems, but it does need to be reviewed regularly and tested in practice.

Read the full article here:

• 9am Business