Your Company Is Vulnerable to CEO Scams & CEO Fraud

In the digital age, many businesses are concerned about data breaches. Considering that firms in every industry have become victims of hack attacks, this is a genuine concern. However, your company is probably even more susceptible to CEO fraud, because it doesn’t require elaborate hacking skills to pull off this kind of deception. Fortunately, once you know what you’re dealing with, there are simple steps you can take to prevent it.

What Is CEO Fraud?

The aim of this type of fraud is to extract money from unsuspecting customers, company employees, or firm executives. The scam artist poses as a high-level executive or CEO of a reputable company and uses deception to extract money from unsuspecting victims. There are a variety of ways this can be done. For example, they may send an email that appears to come from a high-level executive with an urgent request to send money (known as a CEO phishing scam). The email will look legitimate enough and the request for urgency ensures that the employee doesn’t have time to think. When using the CEO fraud phishing scam, scam artists may also focus their efforts on the person who’s new at the job to increase the likelihood of success. 

A scam artist can just as effectively pose as your company or one of your executives on social media and extract money from unsuspecting customers and followers.

It’s also surprisingly easy for criminals to duplicate social media accounts and take advantage of the trust people have in your company. As the pie chart below demonstrates, organizations are using a variety of social media channels to communicate and conduct business. This brings about new challenges that require detection and monitoring.

CEO Fraud Prevention

Since anyone can set up a new social media account within minutes and impersonate your company or an executive of your business, it’s necessary to monitor the social networks all the time. Scammers are sophisticated enough to use automated tools to get money through fraudulent means, which necessitates the need for a sophisticated monitoring and detection service. To detect fraud, all major platforms must be scanned regularly and evaluated for trigger keywords and suspicious activity.

If fraudulent accounts aren’t detected, customers or followers of your brand may inadvertently like or promote these fake accounts, which builds credibility. From there, the scammer could easily set up a fake offer in your company’s name, which will financially harm your customers. They may even share the posts, allowing the perpetrator to spread their circle of influence.

Takedown of Fraudulent Accounts

Once you know that someone else is masquerading as one of your company’s executives, you must take the necessary steps to stop them from doing so. Every social media platform has a protocol for reporting and removing fraudulent accounts, each with its own unique requirements regarding their systems. FraudWatch International mitigates the reporting process by contacting the platforms through their preferred method, ensuring the fastest takedown time possible. This aids in reducing any risks associated with the process to the customer.

Using a professional service that monitors fraudulent activity and shuts down suspicious accounts quickly is the best way to reduce risk to your company and your customers. Once a customer has fallen for a scam they believe came from your legitimate business, they may start talking about you on all social media platforms. Not taking action right away can cost you your precious reputation, which you have worked so hard to build up.

Benefits of Using a Service to Prevent CEO Fraud, CEO Scams, And CEO Phishing

Monitoring social media accounts for fraud isn’t something one person can do effectively, since imposters pop up at all hours of the day. This can hurt your brand and put your customers at risk. Utilizing a professional monitoring service to proactively prevent CEO scams or executive impersonations is the best option. This keeps your company and your brand safe, but it also covers important executives and board members from exposure to fraud.

Fraudulent social media activity harms the customers you’re trying to attract. When you use a monitoring service, you can be sure that your followers are only seeing the legitimate content that you provide.

How FraudWatch International Has Helped

FraudWatch International’s Social Media Monitoring continuously works with different social media platforms. They streamline the process of detecting fraudulent accounts and work with different platforms to take them down.

In 2017, 34% of attacks stayed active on an account for an average of approximately 178 minutes. In the last 4 years, 66% attacks remained active for an average of over 120 minutes. FraudWatch International’s monitoring system cuts down these averages significantly, taking the incidents over the last year down in just over 37 minutes, and the attacks overall in the last 4 years down in around 25 minutes.

After thousands of CEO phishing & CEO fraud takedowns over years of servicing clients, FraudWatch International has maintained processes that ensure the fastest takedown time in the industry in terms of removing fraudulent accounts.

FraudWatch International can help preserve the integrity of your reputation, your business, and your valued customer relationships. Contact us today to learn more about how to protect your most vulnerable assets.