INTERNAL FRAUD: FINANCIAL BENEFITS’ ATTRACTIVENESS
According to a 2016 Gartner study, financial reward are fraudsters’ main motivation for cheating within their organization in order to gather sensitive information and assets. They use a wide range of methods from internal controls’ modification to stealing intelectual property assets and strategic data.
Over 6 out of 10 respondents answered that the financial factor was the strongest, confirming that internal fraud is a rising threat that no business can set aside. Another important motivation for internal fraudsters was higlighted in this study as being able to communicate strategic information to competitors and other third-party actors.
According to this same study, the number of security incidents due to internal actors were 5 times higher in 2010 than in 2007.
UNDERSTAND FRAUDSTERS’ METHODS FOR BETTER PROTECTION
A large number of internal frauds are conducted by employees officially benefiting from limited access rights and having a few responsabilities. Businesses and organizations need to focus on the discrepancies between theoretical and real access rights, and discover how fraudsters manage to access folders and files they should not have access to. Understanding these employees’ motivations – potential or proven fraudsters – is necessary in order to implement the proper security measures and solutions to protect efficiently sensitive data and processes.
The notion of “sensitive” data or process varies regarding the industry, the company’s size and services or products but also varies depending on the organization’s structure and values. As an example,fFor a manufacturer, sensitive processes will often be strategic supply chains.
CRITERIA TO CHOSE AN EFFICIENT SOLUTION
What criteria you need to focus on in order to select the right solution which will ensure sufficient protection for your data and assets ?
- Adaptability
In order to help an organization fight against fraud efficiently, a solution needs to adapt in the right way to the organization’s specificities. Customization does not imply necessarily delays and extra-efforts to implement the solution in a fast and easy way.
- Power
Internal fraud detection and remediation of proven frauds need a solution which enables you to conduct in-depth fine-grained analyses quickly, all the way to access log analysis over sensitive data and processes. The selected solution needs to be powerful enough to provide the necessary analyses and security processes continuously.
- Automation
All of the involved actors – IT teams, auditors, internal control teams, applications managers, etc – endure a heavier workload with too many “by hand” tasks, including tasks regarding fraud risk prevention. Data collection and reconliation automation as well as the automation of review processes need to be major criteria for the selection of a solution for fighting efficiently against fraud.
- Simplicity
Last, using a solution needs to be simple enough and this criterion is often not considered enough. End-users need to feal at ease while using the solution for their tasks in order to ensure better protection and efficiency.