Protect Your Business from Occupational Fraud

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Marijana Dabic

You may feel that your employees would never steal from you or that your business would never be the victim of theft, but the harsh reality is that nearly every business is eventually victimized by fraud or theft. In this day and age, thieves (including your employees) do not need direct access to cash to steal from you; merchandise, supplies and securities are all fair game. You may also be susceptible to losses if finished products or even raw materials are stolen right from under your nose. Essentially, any product can be a target for thieves if there is an opportunity to make a resale profit.

According to research done by the Certified Fraud Examiners, every year, companies all over the globe lose 5 per cent of their revenue because of occupational fraud. That equals about $3.8 trillion in losses.

To put that into perspective, let’s say you racked up $1 trillion of debt. You’ve worked out an agreement to pay off your debt by giving back $1 every second. How long would it take you to get your debt down to zero? Thirty-two thousand years.

There are things you can do to protect your business from occupational fraud. Here are a few of them:

Become aware of behaviours that would be considered “red flags.”
Train supervisors on recognizing potential red flags and on how to react when they discover them. Employees should be aware that they can report any incidents they see.
Focus your efforts more on preventing occupational fraud rather than recovering from it. Although it may be tempting to take a backseat in trying to prevent these incidents, it will cost you much more to recover from the occupational fraud.
Purchase crime insurance.

No matter the size of your company, employee theft remains a very real possibility, which is why it’s important to take steps to insure your business against losses stemming from an incident. While standard property and inland marine insurance policies provide some protection from criminal acts, they often do not cover losses resulting from employee dishonesty. Crime insurance was developed to deal with the limitations of other policies and extend protection to include the fraudulent activities of employees.

Guard Your Data When Using Mobile Apps

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Marijana Dabic

Apps can do pretty much anything—they can find the best local restaurants, chart the quickest routes through snarled city traffic and track weight loss. Unfortunately, they can also steal your data.

In order for apps to do the convenient, beneficial things they do, they use customers’ personal information, such as physical location, contact details and passwords. Unscrupulous data thieves can steal your employees’ devices and gain access to this valuable information, or they can siphon it through a rogue app that your employees downloaded without knowing it was malicious. Hackers do this by adding their own illegitimate elements to a popular app and then offering it for free on a ‘bulletin board’ or through a fake online store. Once employees download the phony app, hackers may have unfettered access to their devices.

To help thwart data theft attempts, encourage your employees to follow these tips for securing personal information when using apps:

Download apps only from official, trusted stores. Be extremely wary of apps from unknown sources.
Read the information about an app in the app store before downloading it. Verify that you are comfortable with the amount and type of personal information it will be using.
Clear out unused apps regularly—inactive apps are an open invitation to thieves. If you no longer use an app, uninstall it.
Install mobile security software to defend your device.
Erase any apps from the device before you recycle, resell or donate it, since they may have access to your personal information. Activate the “factory reset” option in the device’s settings.

43% of companies had a data breach in the past year

Posted on October 8, 2014 by Marijana Dabic

Source: www.cnbc.com

A staggering 43 percent of companies have experienced a data breach in the past year, an annual study on data breach preparedness finds.

The report, released Wednesday, was conducted by the Ponemon Institute, which does independent research on privacy, data protection and information security policy. That’s up 10 percent from the year before.

The absolute size of the breaches is increasing, said Michael Bruemmer, vice president of the credit information company Experian’s data breach resolution group, which sponsored the report.

“Particularly beginning with last quarter in 2013, and now with all the retail breaches this year, the size had gone exponentially up,” Bruemmer said.

He cited one large international breach few Americans have even heard about. In January, 40 percent of South Koreans—a total of 20 million people—had their personal data stolen and credit cards compromised.

The breach was caused by a worker at the Korea Credit Bureau, which provides credit scores to Korean credit card companies.

While shadowy hackers in Eastern Europe often get the blame for these attacks, more than 80 percent of the breaches that Bruemmer’s group works with “had a root cause in employee negligence,” he said.

“It could be from someone giving out their password, someone being spear-phished, it could be a lost USB, it could be somebody mishandling files, it could be leaving the door to the network operations center open so someone can walk in,” he said.

Despite the rise in breaches, 27 percent of companies didn’t have a data breach response plan or team in place, though that’s down from 39 percent who didn’t have them in the previous year’s survey.

Even in companies that have breach plans in place, employees aren’t convinced they will work. Only 30 percent of those responding to the survey said their organization was “effective or very effective” at creating such plans.

One reason might be that few companies seem to take the need seriously. Of the companies surveyed, just 3 percent looked at their plan of action each quarter. Thirty-seven percent hadn’t reviewed or updated their plan since it was first put in place.

The statistics don’t surprise Ted Julian, chief marketing officer with Co3 Systems in Cambridge, Mass. His company does cyber incident response management.

“Most organizations, and I’m only talking the sophisticated ones, have done a little but it’s not enough,” he said.

Breaches are now just a part of life and yet when they happen too often companies pull out “a dusty incident response plan that hasn’t been touched in two years,” Julian said.

The survey was conducted in 2014 and included 567 U.S. executives, most of whom reported to their company’s information security officers.

Is Your Website Secure?

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Marijana Dabic

In the wake of several high-profile cyber security scandals and the widespread Heartbleed security bug, website security is more important than ever. Without a concerted effort to safeguard your business’ website, you risk losing money due to relentless cyber attacks.

Because hackers are constantly searching for new website vulnerabilities and engineering new viruses, website security should be a round-the-clock concern—the threat will never ebb. The consequences of weakening your stance on website security, even for a second, can be disastrous: loss of revenue, damage to credibility, legal liability and broken customer trust.

Web servers, which host the data and other content available to your customers on the Internet, are the most targeted and attacked components of a company’s network. Some specific security threats to Web servers include the following:

Cyber criminals may exploit software bugs in the Web server.
Attackers can disable a network by flooding it with information.
Hackers may secretly read or modify sensitive information on the Web server.
Criminals could gain unauthorized access to resources elsewhere in your business’ network following a successful attack on the Web server.

To avoid similar threats to your website’s security, follow the steps listed below:

Develop and implement a data breach response plan.
Ensure that the Web server operating systems and applications meet your organization’s security requirements.
Publish only appropriate information.
Prevent unauthorized access or modification on your site.
Protect and monitor Web security at all times.

Rely on ABEX for expert, timely guidance on cyber security.

Helpful tips for reducing risk of boiler accidents

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Marijana Dabic

Boiler accidents can be avoided with proper care and maintenance. Reduce your risk of a boiler accident by understanding the common hazards.

Common Boiler Hazards

The most common boiler hazards that lead to accidents are low water levels, excessive pressure and a failure to purge combustible gases from the firebox before ignition. These hazards can cause serious boiler accidents like explosions or fire.

Low water levels in a boiler are caused by improperly functioning low water cut-offs. Water levels that are too low can cause the boiler to buckle or deform, melt down or even explode—all of which can generate severe damage to the boiler and/or to the building.

Excessive pressure in a boiler can also lead to explosions. This occurs when pressure is allowed to build in the boiler. Boiler explosions are very dangerous and can completely destroy buildings.

Fuel-related accidents, like fires and explosions, are also common and occur when combustible gases are not purged from the firebox. Leaking fuel valves can also cause this kind of accident.

Boiler Accident Prevention

Routine maintenance can generally be done by the boiler operator to avoid these devastating accidents. But there are circumstances when a trained professional is needed. These include:

Leaking safety and/or safety relief valves
Contaminated feed water
Steam leaks (in steam boilers)
High stack temperatures (exceeding 177° C)
Insufficient heat for the building
Condensation dripping down the stack or out of the front of the boiler
Constant resetting of controllers and safety devices
Ongoing routine maintenance and inspection is the best way to prevent a boiler accident. Use a checklist when inspecting a boiler to ensure you’re inspecting it thoroughly.

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