Learn about invoice fraud, and how Data Sharing helps you fight it
Diverting vendor payments – a growing and highly lucrative threat
You receive an email with an invoice from a supplier. The email looks unsuspicious, the attached PDF like the vendor's other invoices. The only difference: the email asks you to wire money to a new bank account number. Ever thought about if this could be fraud? What if that one data field with the bank account number is compromised, leading you to pay millions to criminals?
Invoice fraud is real and growing, as some recent cases show:
- Company loses $17m in email scam
- German Automotive Vendor Falls Victim to CEO Fraud
- Company Loses £17,000 to Fraudsters
Share the risk of invoice fraud – join the CDQ Data Sharing Community!
Do you go through labor-intensive checking procedures before you allow a payment to go to an unverified destination? Why not join the CDQ Data Sharing Community and share the burden of bank account verification with other companies! Here is how it works in three easy steps:
1. CDQ's Data Sharing Community has established quality rules and processes – how do leading companies determine if a bank account number is legitimate? Benefit from "crowd wisdom".
2. CDQ calculates a Trust Score for bank account information based on the rules – a higher score indicates several companies using the same bank account for a shared vendor, for example.
3. In case of an active fraud, CDQ immediately alerts all Community Members sharing the same vendor. Through our cloud platform, all Community Members maintain a shared blacklist.
BASF is using Data Sharing to fight invoice fraud
"Sharing proven bank account data saves significant time, compared to contacting the customers/vendors directly to verify new bank accounts. "Data Shareconomy" like the CDQ Data Sharing Community is an effective approach to unlock this source of trusted information."
Philippe Baumlin, Manager of Global Master Data Strategy, BASF
That's why we believe Data Sharing is the best way to safer data!
Some tips from the CDQ Community on how you can avoid invoice fraud:
- Allow changes to bank accounts only following a four-eye principle
The review of new or changed payment data should always be done by at least two people in order to reduce the risk of a social engineering attack and to increase overall attention. - Open communication with colleagues and supervisors in case of suspected fraud
If there is a suspected case of invoice fraud, supervisors should be alerted immediately in order to take appropriate action. In order to reduce the fear of negative consequences if damages have already occurred, the company should establish an appropriate reporting system. A good system allows for a sanction-free identification of possible errors and their root causes (for example, CIRS) - Always validate new or changed bank details before using them
Today, fraudsters are increasingly deploying social engineering methods to learn the customs and habits of individual employees in your company. Also, invoice forgeries are getting better and better thanks to increasingly powerful software; now even experts find it difficult to identify them as fake. The only solution: check back with the sender - Share the burden of verification
If you dread the manual effort of checking back with senders yourself, join the CDQ Data Sharing Community. There, experts tackle the validation of bank data together, providing additional security and distributing the effort among peers - Introduction of an invoice fraud warning system
Implement a company-wide or cross-company blacklist to alert all involved parties in the event of an active fraud attempt. One possibility: You can use the CDQ Blacklist also within your company
Contact us to learn more about preventing invoice fraud with our Data Sharing Community
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Data Management Services
Whether data quality analytics, address validation, deduplication or bank account verification: Our innovative data management services help you to enhance the quality of your vendor and customer master data. Data Management Services
Data Sharing Community
Better quality, less manual efforts through Data Sharing: Our Data Sharing Community helps companies improve their business partner data together, share the burden of data maintenance, and reliably protect all participants against invoice fraud. Want to know more? CDQ Data Sharing Community
Data Quality Checker
The Data Quality Checker, an app linking to our Data Sharing platform, offers both data validation and data enrichment for some of your customer and vendor data. Try it now for free! Data Quality Checker 9008 St. Gallen
Switzerland
88045 Friedrichshafen
Germany
