The risk of fraud is an unfortunate but unchanging part of the business landscape. Regardless of what we do to ward it off, it sometimes seems that hackers move faster than the technology intended to block them does.
Not all your efforts have to be in vain, though. There are actually distinct measures that you can take that will help you protect yourself and your company, and help to keep hackers at bay. We will provide an overview of several of them here.
Strategies to Prevent Business Fraud
There are many challenges involved in running a business. You should be able to focus on your company’s growth, without having to worry about things like fraud. In addition to taking fundamental measures such as insuring your company and conducting background checks on new employees, there are other ways for entrepreneurs to decrease the risk involved in business. These include protecting bank accounts, protecting computer systems, and taking measures to avoid financial fraud. Let’s now take a look at some of the specific things that you can do to keep yourself and your business safe from fraud.
Protect Your Bank Accounts
One of the most essential things you need to do to protect your business is to protect your bank accounts. Measures that you can take include the following:
- Create different passwords for each of your accounts. That way, even if hackers are able to figure out one of your passwords, your other accounts will still be protected.
- Change your passwords regularly. This is another added form of protection that will help keep your accounts safe if one of your passwords happens to leak out. Make an effort to change your passwords on a monthly basis or so.
- Set up alerts for your bank account. Many banks will allow you to do this, and they will inform you any time a change is made to your account. This will help keep you on top of your cash flow and let you know if there has been any suspicious activity.
- Come up with unusual security questions. Hackers can figure out where you went to school or what your dog’s name is easily if they look at your Facebook page. Think of questions that don’t lead to obvious answers.
- Install two-step authentication. This might require the use of a thumbprint or facial recognition, but it can help to secure your accounts by a great deal.
- Take advantage of your bank’s particular features and tools. Each bank has its own features that it uses to keep sensitive information safe. Some use biometric information, such as fingerprints or facial recognition, as a form of logging in.
Make Sure Your Computer System Is Safe
Many of the same principles that you should use to keep your bank accounts safe also apply to your computer network. Protecting your passwords and your WiFi network is, of course, critical to security in your company network. In addition, there are other steps you should take to make sure that you are fully secure:
- Just as you should create strong passwords for your logins, so too should you have a strong password for your company WiFi. Make it something completely incomprehensible to outsiders so that hackers couldn’t possibly figure it out.
- Consider the use of a VPN. Depending on the strength of a given VPN, you could get very good protection from the outside. It will help to encrypt your data and hide your IP from potential hackers.
- Encrypt your data. If data is fully encrypted, there is no way that outside parties will be able to access or read it. It can provide an excellent layer of protection between your server and client apps.
- Set up a firewall. Firewalls are good ways to block unwanted people from accessing your data. They monitor network traffic, stop virus attacks, and prevent spyware from getting into your system.
- Be diligent about updating your software. Updates come around regularly for a reason; don’t just brush them aside thinking that you’ll get back to them later.
- Find the right antivirus and malware protection software. Every computer comes with some sort of antivirus protection, but that by no means it is as effective as you need. Look for a level of protection that you know will keep your network safe. And – as with your other software – make sure that you update it on a regular basis.
Avoid Financial Fraud
In order to avoid financial fraud, you should start with the principles mentioned above. In addition, there are several other things you should keep in mind:
- Review your bank accounts often. Banks don’t necessarily detect every fraudulent activity that takes place. Therefore, you should also be diligent about checking your accounts often to ensure that nothing suspicious is happening. Thieves can be very savvy about the way they manipulate people’s accounts. They will often start with small things to see if they can succeed. This is why it is important to review often.
- Shred sensitive information. These days, companies are printing less than they used to. Nonetheless, it is still possible that sensitive information can be left lying around an office in paper form, or tossed into the trash that can later be found. Therefore, it is essential that you shred any potentially sensitive information that you print.
- Take advantage of AI tools. AI is coming to play a big role in finance these days, including in the area of fraud prevention. There are numerous tools out there that can help your business become more secure by using advanced AI algorithms to detect fraudulent activity that humans would not be able to catch.
- Educate yourself on the current scams going around. You might be surprised at how sophisticated scammers become in their methods. Even if you know not to click on something that says, “Click here to collect $1 million!” scammers have more and more subtle methods of deceiving people all the time. Make a concerted effort to stay on top of this.
Summing up
There are many complicated aspects to running a business. Although the risk of fraud is real, there are quite a few things that you can do to minimize it. Taking measures to protect your bank accounts, your computer systems, and your finances will all help keep your business more secure. Look around for the best available tools to help keep your systems safe. Also, be sure to check regularly for updates on all of the tools you install and programs change frequently to continue warding off new threats.
Photo Credit: First Financial Bank
