Share this article on:
Whether we choose to ignore invoice fraud or email tampering by scammers “as it’s yet to happen to me” or “it has happened to me, but lucky I did not fall for it” mentality, we are all just helping cyber criminals do their job.
Cybercriminal groups are more likely to become more sophisticated and organised, along with developing enhanced, streamlined methods for targeting Australians, no matter the size of your business, services you deliver or even industry you’re in.
Since COVID-19 Scamwatch has reported a significant rise in payment redirection scams costing Australia’s small businesses $14M in losses.
Along with a recent survey released by Xero showing the impact fraudulent invoices have on the Australian SME community, 1 in 5 respondents out of 1,000 small businesses, have been targeted with fraudulent invoices, with 18% falling victim to invoice fraud.
You think about it, the pandemic has significantly increased Australian dependence on the internet, working from home, using your personal or work computers, sending invoices, or emailing account details because that is what you used to do before (which by the way still happens to date), not only impacting you, but hackers can also gain access to your vendors details, impacting the supply chain, which now impacts all involved with major financial loss.
Imagine your invoice is paid, but to someone else by accident!
We understand that many Australian businesses are also recovering to maintain a positive cash flow position, but if we now look at the effort in time which is needed on bookkeeping tasks, along with now needing to have extra vigilance in all your digital transactions, no wonder some Australian businesses are getting caught out by online scammers.
Just imagine, now understanding the effort it takes to generate and manage your accounts to get paid, imagine if one small oversight could have been avoided by spending the time to really look into to your IT set up to safeguard your devices and all round business security along with your bookkeeping and accounts process?
Let’s look at a local sporting club where they paid $150K to a scammer:
It’s a tad shocking to say the least reading the above information and also overwhelming for most Australian Business, no matter what size, in particular for sole traders, contractors, freelancers, tradies, virtual assistants and SME’s in general, whose labour of love can quickly turn into major financial loss.
I am sure you’re asking yourself, what now?
Well, when 89% of SMEs consider cyber security important, we listened!
Industry leaders from Cyber security, Fintech and IT come together on Wednesday 23 February to deliver a fantastic event “How to give your business champagne level security on a beer budget” where small business owners walked away with instant value they can now start implementing into their businesses straight away.
Topics covered:
Speaker line up:
About LUCA Plus
To date, LUCA Plus has helped several sole traders, small to medium-sized businesses and micro businesses solve the challenges caused by manually processing invoices, chasing payments and removing the potential risk of invoice fraud.
Other articles:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-24/business-email-scam-tradies-computer-hacked-costs-51000/12817584
https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/view-all-content/guidance/tax-scam-stories/rajivs-story
References:
Xero Survey and article https://www.accountantsdaily.com.au/business/16369-1-in-5-smes-targeted-with-fraudulent-invoices