How Automation Can Help Protect Your Business

According to a new research study, ninety-six percent of U.S. companies were targeted with at least one fraud attempt in the past year and ninety percent of those companies received one successful attack. With new scams popping up regularly, it’s critical that business owners and decision makers take proactive steps to protect themselves and their businesses.

A simple but powerful way to protect your business is through automation, which can not only prevent fraud, but can also help you detect it. Here are a few ways automation can protect your business, and considerations to discuss with your banking partner.

Prevent Stolen Check Scams

Although check usage has been on the decline for several years, check fraud continues to impact a large population of businesses, with 65% of respondents reporting their organizations had been victims of check fraud, according to an Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) 2024 Payments Fraud and Control Survey Report.

One good way to protect your business from a check scam attack is to move your payments to Automated Clearing House (ACH). ACH payments work as electronic payments, delivering them directly via a bank-to-bank transfer. This ensures money arrives quicker to its intended recipient, and it has a much lower rate of fraud attempts than other payment methods.

Validation of payment instructions and beneficiary payment information as well as strong internal controls are critical whether you’re using checks or ACH, as 33% of respondents in the AFP survey reported ACH fraud. Many forms of digital fraud are often carried out with the help of business email compromise through social engineering, spoofing legitimate email addresses and websites, sending spear phishing emails, and using malware to gain access to your network.

If you still need to use checks for your business, leveraging positive pay services can strengthen your fraud protection. With positive pay, details you share with your bank about the checks issued by the business are compared against checks clearing the business’ checking account to ensure they were not altered by fraudsters.

While you can control how your business makes payments, you can’t always control the way you receive them. If you receive payments via check, consider Remote Deposit Capture (RDC), which allows checks to be scanned into digital images and cleared electronically, or Mobile Check Deposit, which allows you to deposit checks through your smartphone.

Maintain Digital Security

Sixty-three percent of organizations responding to the AFP survey reported experiencing business email compromise in 2023.

Business email compromise scams typically involve asking for sensitive information to be provided “urgently” or tricking recipients into clicking links with malware. It is vital to review emails and requests for sensitive information carefully for red flags.

Keep Cash Safe

Depending on your business, you and your employees might be handling cash on a regular basis. With cash often transferring between numerous hands before being deposited, it’s likely that human error or theft occurs along the way. One way to protect your cash onsite is to implement a smart safe, which you or your employees can deposit money into and have it calculated electronically, allowing for a more expedited deposit of cash to your business’ account.

Offer Transparency Into Accounts

Unfortunately, there isn’t a silver bullet to protect your business against fraud. However, the quicker you can identify fraud and notify your bank, the better off you and your business will be. For this reason, it is important utilize online banking to conduct daily bank account reconciliation. By looking at your accounts daily, you are protecting yourself and your business against fraudulent activity going unnoticed.

With fraud on the rise, it can be daunting for business owners and operators to figure out the best way to protect their businesses and bank accounts. However, there’s no reason to navigate these decisions alone. If you’re not sure where to start, contact your local banker, who can help identify aspects of your business’ finances that can be automated.