Busy weeks, fake invoices: 5 habits that protect your team

From Black Friday to Christmas, the work piles up. Orders have to go out, colleagues book time off and invoices still have to be paid before the year ends. In that rush, a fake invoice is less likely to stand out. Fraudsters know that too.

The good news: five fixed habits stop most of these attempts. Your team keeps working and does not have to spend extra hours on it.

Four situations you might well come across

• A regular supplier emails to say their bank account number changes with immediate effect, “because of the year-end close”. The amount and the order number are correct. The sender address differs by one letter from the real one.
• The finance employee gets an email from “the director”, who is at a trade fair. Can the amount for a machine part still be paid today? And preferably no phone call.
• On the admin team, the holiday cover rota is in full swing. A colleague gets a “parcel not delivered” message with a login page that looks like Microsoft 365.
• The administration of a plant nursery receives a reminder from a supplier about an open invoice, with a request to “just log in to pay”.

In all four cases the trick lies in the rush and in the change, not in the technology. A familiar pattern is the email about a changed bank account number: it looks neat and the amount is right, only the number is not. One phone call to the number you already had almost always settles it.

5 habits that make the difference

1. Always check a new bank account number by phone. Call the number you already had, not the number in the email.
2. Have two people approve payments above a fixed amount. Agree that amount and stick to it, even when it is busy.
3. Look at the full sender address. Not just the name. One letter of difference is enough.
4. Treat urgency as a signal. Urgency is the clearest sign of fraud. Does an email say “today”, “confidential” or “don’t call”? That is the moment to stop and check.
5. Report a click straight away. Did you click on something? Nobody is worse off for it, and you get help sooner. The sooner we know, the sooner we can see what is needed. Call us on +31 115 712 600.

What we do for you

For Digital Care customers, we keep updates, backups and security in order and keep an eye out. Permissions are set per role and every change is recorded in the log. Got a question or a suspicious email? Call us and a colleague will help you.

Will your team recognise these signals?

Want your team to recognise these signals before it gets busy? Take a look at the security awareness training: short lessons and practice emails, without the finger-wagging.