Irish businesses stand to lose huge sums of money at the hands of email fraud and online phishing scams. One particularly common email scam in Ireland sees criminals posing as suppliers and submitting invoices that display alternate bank details resulting in redirected payments.
In many instances, businesses do not realise they have fallen victim to email fraud until some time later, when the legitimate supplier sends a request for payment, and by then it could well be too late; once funds have left the jurisdiction it can be very difficult to recover funds.
Gardaí report that over €2m was stolen by this method in April 2019 alone, and they are advising businesses to be vigilant and to stop and think before changing bank details for anyone.
There are also various email security fraud prevention measures that can be put in place to help identify potentially fraudulent activity. These might include:
- Enhanced malware and phishing protection via Google’s G Suite. Administrators can protect incoming mail and choose what action to take based on the type of threat detected. This includes protection against suspicious attachments, links and spoof emails.
- Similarly, Microsoft’s Office 365 offers Advanced Threat Protection, which enables businesses to identify increasingly sophisticated phishing threats and tailor their anti-phishing policies to ensure the threat of email fraud is minimised.
- Additional security measures to boost email security include creating an SPF record for your web domain. Sender Policy Framework, or SPF, is a method of preventing spam. Criminals are less likely to forge emails pretending to be from your domain spam filters check SPF records and blacklist those without SPF-protection.
- You can further boost your defences against phishing scams in Ireland by creating a DMARC record, essentially an extension of an SPF Record, which authenticates incoming emails.
If your email is as critical as your telephone, then ensure you have a secure email facility in place. To find out more about email security options and phishing protection solutions for your business, contact Aura Internet at services@aura.ie or +353 42 966 4833.