Councilor, Buchanan and Mitchell (CBM) works closely with clients to protect their financial and data operations from phishing attacks and criminals seeking access to corporate networks to steal or hold private, customer-related information for ransom.
Members of CBM’s outsourced accounting and advisory team recently prevented a business from falling prey to a phishing attack and potentially losing a considerable sum of money.
The client had reached out to a vendor to obtain ACH information for sending a payment electronically. When a response arrived claiming to be from the vendor, CBM’s team noticed the email address from the sender included an incorrectly spelled word, alerting them to potential fraud.
It was a classic case of a bad actor spoofing the vendor’s email address. The vendor’s email account had been compromised, and the fraudulent party was manipulating information in an already active email thread. The email provided account information, which was false. Had CBM and the business not recognized the phishing attempt, it is possible the business could have sent payment to a criminal’s account while the legitimate vendor would have received no payment at all.
Thousands of businesses across the country have fallen prey to such attempts and have paid, in some cases, considerable sums of money for being misled. Not all such instances can be caught as easily. CBM’s business and not-for-profit clients are encouraged to protect their financial assets with cyber liability insurance.
The number of phishing and other cyber attacks continues to proliferate, with criminals searching for new, advanced attempts to extract secure information from businesses.
The CBM team is available to help. Click here to read our blog post about the different kinds of cyberattacks and the importance of investing in cyber liability insurance.
Please contact Dominick V. Bellia via our online contact form for more information.
Councilor, Buchanan & Mitchell (CBM) is a professional services firm delivering tax, accounting and business advisory expertise throughout the Mid-Atlantic region from offices in Bethesda, MD and Washington, DC.
