In this age of technology, businesses are susceptible to suffer financial harm from cyberspace activities. Hackers/viruses/imposters can use various methods to financially cripple an organization, and unless you have stringent risk management protocols in place, losses will happen.

Statistics show that many businesses suffer financial harm from deception fund transfer request from imposters, and studies show that these activities will only get worse in the next few years. Deception fraud is one of the most common activities that take place in cyberspace. A common example is when an imposter hacks into an email account, whether it’s your vendor’s email, employee, or friend, and makes a request to transfer funds to a different bank account. And a lot of times, when an email appears to be legit, fund transfer is initiated without due diligence, only to find out that it was completely fraudulent.

It’s important to implement the following protocols at the very least, such as, call back verification, email authentication verification, dual authorization for payment disbursement, to protect your bottom line. However, stringent risk management protocols will not always guarantee prevention either, so it’s important to have the right coverage in place.

Social Engineering Fraud Coverage or Deception Fraud Coverage is a crime insurance policy that would respond. Standard crime insurance WILL NOT extend coverage to deception fraud, therefore, you must add this coverage as an endorsement. If you haven’t procured commercial crime insurance, it's definitely worth considering.