Manufacturers: Don’t let the Coronavirus give you a Cybervirus!

Statistics show that in past difficult times, the propensity for cybercrime and fraud increases. Time and again. And now we have possibly the biggest economic challenge in history and the digital age combining to create a perfect storm of risk to your business. Right now, there are people out there exploiting the current situation to maintain or boost their own incomes, at your expense.

In the days before digitisation, it was all about security of the cheque book, the petty cash tin, the payroll and the other physical assets of the business. These days it’s all about data and what isn’t quite what it seems to be…

Who writes a cheque these days? Most invoices come over the internet in some form or other, often through email. And most payments are via BACS to account details ‘baked into’ our system. Often we cannot be sure who we are corresponding or dealing with, is who they claim to be. Indeed, there is a complete ‘industry’ grown up on the Dark Web, that trades in the personal details of individuals and the companies they work for with the purpose of committing cybercrime.

Just to make you think about whether you need to look into this some more:

• Are you the manufacturer with internet connected machinery where you haven’t closed off external data ports which could expose your machines to outside interference?
• Are you the business who, with your finance and administration team working remotely, might be allowing supplier bank and other details to be changed on your system without verification or invoices sent over the internet to be passed for payment and paid without verifying that they are a proper supplier?
• Could your people react to the email ‘from’ HMRC or your bank offering a refund or a grant by responding to a web address?
• Are you the business that allows your team to upload files onto your computer seemingly from customers, without them being virus checked or even worse, allows people to use USB drives, (especially the ‘novelty one’ that was sent to them in the post)? And when you discover that you have downloaded ransomware, what will you do?

The list goes on and on. And these scams are never for a couple of hundred quid… the amounts involved here are always for thousands of pounds.

And for a lot of this, you may well not be insured… and even if you are, your premiums will reflect lax systems, if not in the current year, certainly next!

It may be that you are hearing lots about cybercrime but not hearing about what’s actually happening in your industry. Well, all of the above are actual case studies that have happened to companies just like yours.

We know because we have seen them. You won’t hear about them in the media because it’s ‘embarrassing’. But they absolutely do happen and they are on the increase.

We can help you.

Of course, if you have a cyberattack or subjected to ransomware, we can help you manage the situation (NEVER ‘‘just pay the ransom’’ by the way), but we would far rather prevent rather than cure. The ways we can help you and the costs are affordable; and it can often pay back in reduced fraud and cybercrime insurance.

If you interested please get in touch with either myself (johnathan.dudley@crowe.co.uk) or my fellow partner Jim Gee (jim.gee@crowe.co.uk).