A study conducted by OpinionWay on behalf of SAP and Trustpair reveals worrying information: more than one in two companies suffered a bank fraud attack last year. And many succeed.
To get some idea of the thorny problem of transfer fraud against ETIs and large French companies or those present in France, SAP companies (a major player in business application software) and the platform for combating transfer scam Trustpair entrusted OpinionWay with carrying out a study. Its results, published this Tuesday, February 28, bear witness to the relentlessness of crooks in the professional world and to what has become a scourge.
Half of the attacks are successful
We can thus see that 50% of companies testify to an attempt at transfer fraud in 2022. 31% of the 150 companies questioned even indicated that they had suffered more than one attempt in less than a year. More than half of businesses (54%) also acknowledged an increase in attacks last year compared to 2021. The number of bank fraud attempts averaged 2.1 attacks per business over the year.
What is most worrying is that beyond the fact that more than one out of two companies seems to have been affected by transfer fraud, the percentage of successful attacks is quite high: 50% of they went all the way. More than one out of two attempts is therefore successful.
It will be recalled that these scams with false transfer orders push an employee or a public official to carry out a bank transfer, while the real creditor or other actor in the payment chain is the victim of identity theft. This maneuver spares no one: small or large companies, local authorities and public establishments, all are victims.
Fraud that always targets the smallest structures
These frauds have a real financial impact for the victims. Through the results, it is estimated that 71% of attacks relate to sums of less than 100,000 euros and that they mainly target companies with fewer than 5,000 employees. ” The majority of frauds focus on sums between 50,000 and 100,000 euros “Explains the study, up to 26%. Larger structures (more than 5,000 employees) account for only 14% of fraud. But when they fly, the latter exceed 300,000 euros on average.
There are also several types, essentially four, of wire transfer fraud. We find false customer fraud (39%), false invoice fraud (37%), RIB fraud (36%) and the famous CEO fraud (34%). We find there each time a large part of social engineering, the scammer having to deceive his target.
In most cases (91%), the stolen sums were partially recovered. However, only 26% of companies claim to have found all of the stolen money. As often, it is the small and medium-sized structures that suffer the most. ” Studies show that we tend to minimize the risks, yet we must strive to address these hidden issues as much as those that are already in place. It is necessary to set up continuous control tools integrated into the ERP [ndlr : Enterprise Resource Planning], but also governance between the different teams to manage risks. 50% of businesses were victims of fraud in 2022, but 100% can be targets “says Patrice Vatin of SAP France.
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