By Shauna Woody-Coussens, managing director, BKD |
Recently, Tomer Barel, the chief risk officer at PayPal, share his five fraud predictions for 2016 with CNBC and talked about the evolving interplay of technology and fraud. Here are the highlights.
- Social networks will help fraudsters get more sophisticated.
Major social networksare becoming more searchable, allowing fraudsters to learn more about their intended targets. This will lead to more successful social engineering attacks as targets will be led to believe they’re interacting with legitimate entities with whom they have an established relationship. Even the strongest network security is only as strong as its weakest link — which often is the employee. Now may be a good time to remind employees of these tips:
- Do not provide data (confidential or not) and credentials via email, chat messenger or phone or in face-to-face conversations with unknown or suspicious persons or entities.
- Avoid clicking on that link to an unknown site in an email. Take a closer look at the URL and the sender’s email address. They may be similar to but not exactly what you anticipate. Check for misspellings, @ signs and subdomains.
- Beware of “baiting,” when an attacker tempts the user with a free or found USB or thumb drive, hoping someone will pick it up and plug it into their computer. Once you do, you’re hacked.
