Consumers aren’t the only ones being targeted by fraudsters in identity theft schemes – businesses are equally vulnerable. Because businesses often don’t discover that a crime has occurred until major losses start to accumulate, there’s a potential for massive monetary loss and their reputation, finances, and credit have already been dealt a severe blow that may be hard to recover from.
Reported cases of corporate identity theft increased 46% in 2020, according to the National Cybersecurity Society. The pandemic is one of the main drivers, with fraudsters focusing on corporations instead of consumers because of the bigger bank account balances and higher credit limits.
Corporate identity theft involves a fraudster impersonating a business to perpetrate fraud. The tactics may resemble a classic phishing scheme, where a fraudster pretends to be a company executive who urgently needs a wire transfer to a new or unknown account. Or it might involve a merchant account being created in a company’s name, or the fraudster leveraging malware to infiltrate business networks to acquire billing and invoice information or financial account details via email threads.
What’s important to know is that any business is at risk for corporate identity theft.
