Social Engineering Yet Again!

The scourge of cybercrime is becoming more and more prevalent these days and criminals have taken things to new lows with the types of theft and fraud they're using on unsuspecting victims.

One of those lows is what is generally referred to as "Social Engineering". Best described as a 'modern-day version of the old con-scams", criminals troll social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, as well as company websites, to gather information about company employees and personnel. They also get info from other sources to gain knowledge of a company's vendors and get copies of letterheads, invoices, and other such documents.

Using the gathered information, criminals impersonate vendors and request changes in banking details and payment options. Far too often, employees just take the information, process it and make payments to what turns out to be a fake vendor account. Usually, the criminal activity is only discovered months later, when the real vendor comes looking for the payments they haven't received.

Social Engineering is one of the hottest topics in crime insurance these days and BlueCircle has multiple connections with major insurers who provide coverage for this type of thing.

Educating employees about how these cyber scams work, coupled with training them on best practices for financial account processes and money handling, is the best method to prevent losses but having the comfort of knowing you have coverage for cyber crime is well worth the cost.