There are many ways to avoid being a victim of a fake invoice scam. Please follow these preventive measures when next you handle an invoice for your company:
Create Effective Communication Channels To Verify Payment Requests
That is, make sure that the staff can determine any invoice from the issuing company by entering the contact details (email, phone number, etc.) in a verified, safe and reliable communication channel.
Train your entire staff in risk prevention and cyberattacks to teach them to identify and prevent any attack through digital means.
Carefully review all email addresses, especially those related to paying bills.
Pay attention to frequent billing reminders and red flags. Scammers will send more reminders than a legitimate provider.
Avoid the accumulation of invoices to make it easier for authorizers to detect discrepancies. If the individual in charge of payments has to settle 300 received invoices instead of 30, the authorization will likely be done quickly. For this reason, the delay needs to be eliminated so that employees spend more time determining whether an invoice is genuine or false and verifying whether it is correct.
If the sender claims there has been a change in business procedure, investigate how previous invoices were sent. Were previous invoices sent by regular mail, while this one is sent by email? Previous credit card payments were made, but now they want you to do a manual bank transfer?
Don’t Be Pressured To Make Up The Payment
Cybercriminals may try to threaten you, telling you, for example, that you won’t get a discount or free shipping. Don’t trust without checking. The use of pressure is suspect in itself. A supplier is usually tactful with their customers. Genuine vendors will understand that it can take time for a business to settle an invoice.
Designate specific people to place orders, manage invoices and make payments and introduce hierarchical levels based on the amount. The higher the amount, the more training must have who authorizes it or pays.
Do not make any payments until you confirm that the company has ordered or received such products or services. If you receive unsolicited goods, you can legally return them without penalty.
If you receive a fraudulent invoice, you must inform the appropriate authorities in your area.
On a personal and professional level, we must know about Cybersecurity to prevent scams and cyberattacks and, if they affect us, manage them effectively.
Train your staff in Cybersecurity from beginner to expert level with professional Teachers in the field like Cybera, and be more secure from cyber-attacks.