Earlier this week, the Bank of Ireland was fined over €1.6 million for failures in relation to a Cyber Fraud case from back in 2014.

How did Bank of Ireland suffer Cyber Fraud?

What happened back then was a client of their Private Banking arm had their email account compromised by some cyber criminals. They sent an email to the Bank of Ireland staff requesting them to make payments of some €106,000 and the bank staff followed through on those instructions and made the payments.

The client subsequently realised the fraudulent transactions on their account. They notified the bank which immediately refunded the amounts to the client.

Why did they get fined?

However they did not report the matter to An Garda Shíochána in good time and they also did not highlight the incident correctly to the Central Bank of Ireland, the Irish regulator. So for those reasons they were given this significant fine.

If a bank can fall for this, how can I stop that happening in my business?

As I mentioned back in #WeekendWisdom number 31, this is very, very much like a CEO fraud or business email compromise. So the advice then still stands. Never carry out payment instructions based on an email alone.

Always seek verification of a payment instruction by way of maybe a telephone call. Only use a number that you have on file for that authorised person. Just never act on an email because compromising email accounts is incredibly easy.

So that’s it for this week. Let’s be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

How can L2 Cyber Security help you?

We offer a full range of training programmes, which can be delivered online or in-person*. This training can show your staff how this type of fraud is committed so they can be recognise it if the cyber criminals try it on them.

L2 Cyber Security are also a partner of CyberRiskAware for online self-directed Cyber Security Awareness training and Phishing testing.

Contact us for more information at info@L2CyberSecurity.com.

*With appropriate social distancing and other health and safety measures adhered to.

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The post #WeekendWisdom 039 Bank of Ireland Cyber Fraud appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..

This week we have seen a significant increase in smishing attempts for Bank of Ireland customers. Now if you’re not a Bank of Ireland customer you won’t fall for this.

But smishing is like phishing it’s where you receive a text message that wants you to take some action. That action will actually end up compromising you, usually the action is to click a link.

So what do Bank of Ireland Smishing Scams look like?

So here you can see an example of the type of text messages that have been going around this week. It says that your Visa card has been deactivated and that you need to click on this link to sort the issue out.

Now, if you click on the link it will take you to what looks very very much like the genuine Bank of Ireland website to login. But it’s obviously not. So once you type in your user ID and date of birth, it will then pop up something similar to this.

Where it looks to ask you for lots of personal information. Name, address, telephone number, date of birth, mothers maiden name, where you grew up, an email address and this can all be used against you, by people, they might be able to get access to your account.

Anything else?

They might even be cheeky enough to capture your Visa card information including the 3 digit security code. And really cheeky they even say that if you have the Verified by Visa turned on, if you say yes, that they’ll ask you for your verified by Visa card password. That way they can end up completely controlling your accounts.

Banks don’t send emails or text messages with things on them for you to click. Just ignore them.

So that’s it for this week. Let’s be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

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The post #WeekendWisdom 025 Bank of Ireland Smishing Scams appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..