Picture this: At the beginning of your workday, coffee is still hot, and the phone and email notifications begin to roll in. And this time, you are thankful for those incessant “pings.”
“QuickBooks has initiated your wire transfer for $X, XXX, XXX.XX”… half of the business bank account.
What do you do? Do you scream? Do you call your IT provider? Do you contact your bookkeeper? Do you call the person that is receiving the wire? Do you panic and freeze?
This is a true story. The company had been hacked, and its emails were compromised. The hacker disabled the company from seeing outgoing emails to their accountant and bookkeeper and falsely represented the owner requesting this transfer to be wired.
Had the company not enabled email notifications, the wire transfer would have been completed without anyone noticing for quite some time. And the funny thing about wire transfers? After 36 hours, that’s it…the money is gone. It’s not like credit card fraud—no chance of recouping that loss. If the funds are being wired to an account in the same bank it came from; it typically takes 24 hours for them to be gone.
So here are four essential tips for cyber security:
1 – Sign up for a password generator like LastPass. This is a premium password manager that stores encrypted passwords online. Passwords can be shared with those that need to share access. However, all are encrypted.
2 – Always, ALWAYS implement a 2-step authentication on all platforms—email, QuickBooks, Google Docs, even social media channels…everything.
3 – Enable notifications. Yes, having a bunch of little icons or banners come across your phone may be annoying. However, those little annoyances could save you money and protect your privacy.
4 – Hire a professional bookkeeper to monitor and manage your books. Guess what? They were the first call that the company made to ensure everything was ok and ask what the next steps were.
ShoreSource Business Solutions can help protect you.
Are you interested in learning more about ShoreSource Business Solutions, LLC?
Feel free to reach us at 843.729.2961 or info@shoresourcebiz.com.
