Did you know the average cost of one cybercrime event to a business is $13 million?¹ Businesses have no choice but to become more resistant to cybersecurity attacks. Panelists Lauren Hess of Wintrust Treasury Management and Tom Wojcinski of Wipfli discuss the importance of organizational cybersecurity practices and banking safeguards to protect your business from cybercrime.

Top takeaways from this webinar:

1. Accounts payable fraud the most common scheme used to steal money from businesses. “It’s shocking how effective this is,” says Wojcinski. Watch out for phishing emails sent to employees redirecting payments to new accounts. The timespan from initial inspection to encryption can be as little as four hours, so your business has to be quick to detect the attack and eliminate it from the environment.

2. Stop using “Password1” as a password. Poor authentication systems make cyberattacks possible. In a recent Wipfli penetration test, 69% of an organization’s passwords were cracked in less than seven hours, with “Password1” found used in more than 100 instances. “The target is you,” Wojcinski shares. “The best hackers aren't hacking systems, they're hacking people.” Combat terrible—and guessable—passwords by implementing multifactor authentication combined with the use of passphrases.

3. Supplier impersonation is the most damaging fraud scheme to a business. Criminals find both digital and physical ways to gain access to key accounts payable contacts and divert payments to their own accounts. Multifactor authentication is an important step in protecting your business before conducting a transaction, and the bank can help. Hess stresses, “We all understand it's our desire to provide good customer service and work fast, but we open up opportunities to being a victim of fraud if we do not go through double and triple safeguards to protect our business accounts.”

Your business banking team can help recognize if fraud has occurred and set up safeguards to prevent fraud from happening in the future. We are in your corner! Watch the webinar for more details on the current cybersecurity landscape and critical practices to protect your business from fraud today.