Scams and other ways to part you from your money

It may be that people are more gullible at this time of year but it seems that the number of scams is on the rise.  We have had a number of telephone calls where the caller is trying to encourage us to buy bitcoins, transfer pensions or invest in various schemes. They are wasting their time, when we mention what we do as Management Consultants in security.

However, they are getting far smarter in their approach.  Masquerading as police, insurance companies, banks and other organisations. Fear of loss is being played upon to persuade us to transfer our money or other valuables in one form or another.

We have also received a number of bogus invoices and these are followed up with chasing emails.  The emails have a link to query the invoice; this link tries to download a virus which can compromise computer systems.

The GDPR has spawned quite a number of scams where you are being asked for details of customers, suppliers and staff ‘ to validate your compliance with GDPR’

And an old scam has raised its head again where an email from a senior member of staff, who is not in the office and not contactable, directs accounts to remit a payment on an urgent basis.  The email address been cloned or hacked and the payment is being made to the scammer.

This is the time of year when a good review of computer security should take place as well as:

• A review of  antivirus systems
• A review of  anti-malware systems
• Training in the identification of bogus callers and scams
• A review of the systems for processing payments of invoices
• Training in GDPR to show what is required and conversely what should not be released.