External cyber fraud is a great threat for most companies - report

The report ‘UK Business Payments Barometer: De-risking for growth’ found that 69% of financial decision makers were confident in their anti-fraud measures put in place to help their business. Despite this encouraging figure, half of UK financial decision makers believe their revenue has been negatively affected by fraud.

The report surveyed over 400 financial decision makers including business owners, CFOs, CEOs, CTOs and COOs, on liquidity, fraud and payments. A broad range of businesses were surveyed, ranging from small businesses (SMEs) to enterprises that employ over 10,000 employees.

Over half (52%) of SMEs are most concerned about external cyber fraud threats, such as their systems being hacked, whilst 34% of corporates are most worried about the threat of external exploitation of their internal payment processes and staff. Potential threats include invoice diversion fraud and CEO fraud (known as ‘whaling’).

Richard Ransom, payments solution lead at Bottomline Technologies, said that Providing ongoing training and education for employees, putting guidelines and procedures in place for protecting sensitive data on corporate devices can all help reduce the risks of fraud.

Bottomline Technologies expert warn that companies need to ensure they have the correct security measures and awareness in place to protect them as much as possible against all types of internal and external payment fraud.