In connection with November’s International Fraud Awareness Week (November 13th-19th, 2022), this article addresses some of the common cyber pitfalls, and it also includes some of those cyber incident legislative responses initiated to help reduce such events from happening on an international scale.
A Changing Workforce & Impacts on the Cyber World
As noted by the United States’ Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (“CISA”), with increased dependence on modern technology also comes increased exposures to security breaches and
other forms of cyberattacks. Working from home in either a partially or totally remote work environment is becoming the norm rather than the exception. Not only do the forms of technology change, but the access locations do also.
Cyber Red Flags: How to Recognize and Respond
With this continued interest and capability for remote work, comes the need to further educate the workforce about the many cyber pitfalls that are present. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) has emphasized just how important it is to educate yourself about how best to protect personal information, your computer, and your network from being compromised through various forms of cyber intrusions. A business email compromise (“BEC”), for example, can be very economically damaging and because email reliance is a common occurrence both professionally and personally such risk exposures are very real in today’s world. Ransomware attacks and spoofing and phishing scams also present additional cyber-risk exposures.
Worldwide Legislative Responses to Cybercrime
The United Nations’ Conference on Trade and Development examined the presence of cybercrime legislation worldwide as of 2021, finding that 80 percent of countries had enacted cybercrime legislation, five percent had proposed cybercrime legislation, 13 percent had no such legislation, and one percent of countries did not have data on the status of cybercrime legislation. The increase in fraud activity, especially that accomplished through cyber infrastructure, has created a legislative response at the governmental level and led to calls for more awareness and training by private industry and even at the individual level.
How Information Sharing Translates to Deterrence
While no industry or sector is immune from potential fraud-related cybercrime, there are multiple resources and/or mechanisms that are available to help reduce the likelihood of such an event from occurring. Cyber assessments and cyber fraud training are just some of the tools available that help to identify risk exposures and also provide accompanying mitigation strategies.
By: Jessica Cambridge
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