Businesses are expected to abide by fair competition laws and other regulations, many of which are designed to prevent any form of fraud. If there’s anything you will need to avoid while running your business, it’s fraud simply because businesses in the United States lose billions of dollars to white-collar criminals.
With the best safeguards in place, you could expose your operation to fraudsters looking to bypass your defenses and steal not just money but also information. The reputational impact it brings can also disable your business’s potential for further growth. Your best course of action is to apply these methods that can help you stop fraud or keep your business from unknowingly getting involved in fraud.
- Keep an eye out on your business
As a business owner, vigilance is the most effective weapon you could yield to prevent any instance of fraud from affecting your operations. Smaller establishments are easier to manage because of their size. Not only that but the owners of these businesses could immediately figure out what is wrong. Larger companies are more complicated in the sense that the subtlest signs of fraud are more likely to be overlooked.
Either way, it’s important to keep tabs on what’s happening on the ground, especially when it comes to recruiting new employees, improving current systems, and enhancing your security posture. If you have to, talk to your supervisors and see how certain processes work. Having a presence in the day-to-day operations of your business will help you find out if anything has gone wrong along the way.
- Train your staff about the latest threats
Fraudsters infiltrate your business through the easiest way they know how: By duping your employees. From malware injections to phone scams, criminals will exploit the gullibility and good faith of your workers so they can gain access to login credentials and even the identities of your staff.
Since they’re handling the assets that contain critical information about your business, your employees should be oriented on how to detect and recognize attempts to commit fraud. There should also be protocols on how they handle and determine the authenticity of the documents and emails that pass through them.
- Streamline your recruitment process
If you want to prevent fraud from being committed as a result of human error, you will need to make sure that the human factor itself is competent. Your recruitment process should focus on onboarding people who know the value of data security and who have no prior criminal background. Without an effective means to filter out potentially problematic workers, you could end up hiring the wrong people.
Before you get a candidate to sign an employment contract, you will need the person to undergo several screenings. Academic credentials should not be your only gauge. Instead, check the candidate’s prior experience by contacting their previous employees. Ask them about the candidate’s strong points and whether or not they have been cited for violating company policies on data security. Your process must also run accurate criminal screenings to protect your business.
- Build a legal team
Fraud can happen to a business that’s unfortunate enough to shoulder a legal burden. When an instance of fraud hits your business, you will have to deal with the legal aftermath. You will have a lot on your plate, including the process of filing a lawsuit or setting up your defense in case you have been accused of committing fraud even if you don’t intend to.
Whatever the scenario, it helps to build a strong legal team that can help you navigate the intricacies of white-collar criminal cases. If you are pursuing an individual or organization for fraud, your legal experts can act swiftly to develop a strategy and recover the losses you sustained as a result of their actions.
On the other hand, you can also work closely with law firms like Purser Law if you and your business have been unfairly accused of committing fraud. But even before any of these scenarios happen, having the right people in your legal team allows you to prepare for any crisis that may tarnish your reputation.
- Use new technology to your advantage
Aside from having the right people, you also need the right tools to help you beef up your defenses and protect your business against fraud. You can start by improving your cybersecurity posture. Falling short of cybersecurity best practices will expose you to white-collar criminals who use the latest strategies to bypass outdated defenses. Opt to enhance your cybersecurity systems by updating your anti-malware features and VPN and setting up a secure network if your business operates multiple devices.
There are also AI-driven tools you could use to help detect vulnerabilities and get recommendations on how you can reduce your business’s exposure to hackers. You can also backup critical data to a secure cloud server so you will be able to recover stolen or sabotaged information and ensure business continuity. With the right tools in place, your business is in a better position to prevent a data leak that could be a precursor to widespread fraud.
- Secure all your payment channels and login pages
If your business accepts online payments, there is a big chance that hackers will exploit your payment gateways and steal customer data. You don’t want that given the legal fallout you will be under when it’s proven that you let customers use an unsecured gateway for checking out. One way you can prevent this is to use data encryption to scramble details such as customer names, addresses, and credit card numbers. It also matters to use a reliable gateway in terms of data security.
Apart from that, you will also need to prevent unauthorized purchases. If a fraudster takes hold of a customer’s login details, there are several ways to prevent them from gaining access to the customer’s account. The most basic is multi-factor authentication which verifies users across several authentication layers.
Endnote
As a business owner, you have the right to operate your establishment without fear of being the victim of fraud or being accused of fraud. By applying the guide above, your business will thrive like it’s supposed to.
