Businesses are losing millions through this increasingly sophisticated email scam…
There’s an online scam that’s currently gathering momentum, known as the ‘Bogus Boss’. And if you want your small business to avoid losing a lot of hard-earned cash to fraudsters, read this short guide on what it means and how to beat it.
The Bogus Boss
So here’s how it works.
Cyber criminals get the name and email address of one of your senior staff members. Then they create an email from them designed to look and sound exactly the same.
Typically, the email asks for an urgent payment to be made, and account details are provided. This account of course belongs to the criminal, and the money is immediately withdrawn.
What can you do to protect your business?
This scam has already cost businesses millions of pounds because fraudsters are getting better at making the emails look legitimate.
But there is plenty you can do to stop it happening to your business:
• Always treat emails asking for urgent bank transfers suspiciously
• Contact the sender to check the request, but don’t use any phone numbers included in the email
• Check the email for poor grammar or spelling, or even language the supposed sender wouldn’t use
• Make sure you and everyone you work with uses strong passwords that you change regularly
• Implement a process for authorising payments that ensures any request like this has to be verified by more than one person
For more tips, check out RBS’ video on how to spot scam emails.
