👨🏻💻⚠️ Beware: Is Your CEO a Fake? How to Spot AI-Powered Scams.
Imagine jumping on a video call with your CEO, CFO, and other members of your leadership team. As the virtual meeting wraps up, they forward you an invoice and instruct you to pay the new vendor millions of dollars for a new, custom AI buildout that will save the company 50% in SG&A costs and increase sales potential by an additional 25% in five years.
Your gut may tell you something doesn’t feel right about the request, but given the excitement generated in the company for this paradigm-changing technology, during the video call with your leadership team, you process the payment anyway. Days later, the payment is flagged, and your CFO gives you a call asking why the cash account was drained. (And that is the nice version of how that call would go!)
A similar scenario happened to a multinational company in Hong Kong. Scammers used deepfake AI technology to create a realistic, virtual meeting with “a CFO & other leaders” and an employee. The scammers were able to trick the employee into sending $25 million to their account.
While new technology brings the promise of improved productivity in future, it also creates a new plethora of risks for organizations.
Larry Hartmann, the CEO of RoseRyan’s parent company, ZRG Partners—a Global Talent Advisory firm—provided the following tactics that employees can use to help protect their companies from this type of scam:
It takes the collective effort, awareness, and vigilance of ALL employees; a strong cybersecurity and IT function; and strong internal controls to protect an organization, its employees, and its customers from bad actors in the world today.
RoseRyan and the greater ZRG Partners organization are here to help!
If you’re feeling unsure about how secure your organization’s systems and tech applications are, get in touch with us to ensure peace of mind.
VP Finance. fractional CFO and Controller support for start-ups through sale/ exit. Right-hand to the CEO and COO. Ultra-marathon runner, former ballerina, Boy Scout leader, and wife of USMC Veteran.
3moIn what "lack of controls" world did this fictional Controller work? I've never encountered a system that let a single person in the accounting/ finance team both initiate and release transactions for "millions". I understand the article's point, but I'd think most companies have a smidgen of segregation of duties and dual controls with their disbursement systems and online banking portals, to prevent this in the first place. Or I'm still blissfully working with and for companies that have those controls in place.