Business Doctors protects SMEs from fraudsters

Business Doctors has been advising business owners how they can stay vigilant against the threat of fraudsters.

Lots of small business owners are so busy they don’t have much time to second-guess suspicious calls or emails. However, millions of pounds each year are lost each year to scammers, potentially marking the end of small businesses or at the very least pushing their insurance premiums up sky high.

Business Doctors outlined how committed some fraudsters are to scamming hard-working business owners out of their cash, explaining how some even set up a full-blown business and recruit skilled graduates to con people out of their money. One of the most popular tactics used by fraudsters is so-called ‘vishing’, in which they’ll spend lots of time gathering information about your business to target you when you’re at your weakest.

For example, it explained how scammers may take advantage of times when your accountant or head of finance is out of office to contact you with a supposedly ‘urgent’ request. They will take advantage of the team’s lack of financial know-how and strike using their practiced tactics.

The business franchise also shared its top tips for avoiding fraudsters that are looking to target vulnerable SMEs. These included:

• Making sure your staff don’t use common, easy to hack passwords (like 123456 or password)
• Having a robust anti-virus software
• Establishing processes to make sure your staff know what to do if someone calls with any possibly suspicious requests
• Making sure you’re using the latest version of your web browser (this is what allowed the recent NHS ransomware scam to happen)
• Reporting fraud as soon as it happens to make sure others don’t fall foul of the same scams

It also warned people to be vigilant at all times and to report or double check anything they felt was even a little bit suspicious. For example, it said that one of its clients detected a fraudulent email claiming to be from the company’s MD as they felt it was way too polite to be from their boss!

Sophie Cole, Point Franchise ©