Watch out for these two types of scams this Christmas, warns cyber expert

With the festive season upon us, small business owners are busier than ever due to eased lockdown restrictions, borders opening, staff shortages and customers ready to fill Christmas stockings. This time of year is also a busy time for two types of scams that target small businesses, email compromise and ransomware scams, warns MYOB’s Head of Information and Cyber Security, Peter Wolski.

Take steps to be better protected from scams

The latest report from Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC),  shows scam activity increasing. The ACSC received over 67,500 cybercrime reports in the past financial year, up almost 13 per cent from the previous financial year. Cybercrime refers to criminal activity using computers and the internet to attempt to expose, or gain unauthorised access, to a computer system.

ACSC received a report of a cyber attack every 8 minutes in the financial year 2020-21, increased from one every 10 minutes in the previous year. In the report the ACSC said “malicious cyber activity against Australia’s national and economic interests is increasing in frequency, scale, and sophistication.”

Watch out for these scams this festive season:

A business email compromise scam is when someone sends an invoice posing as a known supplier to the small business, but this invoice comes with different payment details. If the person paying the invoice doesn’t check and pays into a new account, they could transfer money directly to those who have stolen the vendor’s identity.

This is a particular concern this time of year because it is most prevalent when invoices and bills are being paid between businesses.

As the ACSC report states, “cybercriminals follow the money. Australia’s relative wealth, high levels of online connectivity and increasing delivery of services through online channels make it very attractive and profitable for cybercrime adversaries.”

In December last year over 1,400 of these scams were reported to Scamwatch with a total loss of more than $9.9 million. Double-checking new pay details is imperative. Making a quick phone call to your payee could avoid both the vendor and the vendee being scammed.

Quick tip to protect against this scam:

Remind yourself and your team to look out for unexpected changes in payment details and validate and verify them with a phone call to your supplier.

The last 12 months have also seen ransomware scams increase, this sees computer systems or email hacked. The scammer encrypts data and extorts the small business for money. Like all criminals they know their targets and how much money to ask for.

Your banking and accounting software use multi-factor authentication which goes a long way to help you keep protected from this scam. It’s also important for you to put multi-factor authentication on your email and cloud storage so scammers can’t hack those systems either.

So far this year there have been more than 3,000 malware scams reported to Scamwatch with a total loss of $1.1 million.

Quick tip to prevent against ransomware scams:

Multi-factor authentication will stop a wide variety of scams. Your email shouldn’t be your second factor, it should be your phone or an authentication app such as from Google or Microsoft. Many of the products used to run your business should already have multi-factor authentication turned on, if they don’t, check if the option is available and turn it on.

We know small business owners are time-poor, however, security is as critical for businesses as insurance. When there is so much happening over the Christmas period it’s vital to implement some quick security measures to protect you and your revenue. It’s also important to stay across the scams that are prevalent, like the two mentioned here.

Understanding what to look out for will help you stay alert to the scammers and help protect yourself this festive season.

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