n average, data breaches in the last year cost UK businesses £3,100 while UK charities lost around £1,030.

However, it turns out that 53% of all data breaches are due to individual negligence, rather than malware or phishing scams.

In order to maintain the safety of our clients’ accounts and funds, at Ebury we have a range of processes and protocols in place to fight against fraud, however it’s also down to each of our clients to make sure they’re doing the best they can to help prevent mistakes from occurring.

Online transfer fraud

When transferring money online, it’s important to be aware of push payments fraud. This involves hackers intercepting money transfers online, or intercepting emails and posing as a beneficiary to whom you pay money to.

Hackers pose as your bank or trusted beneficiary stating they have a new account that you need to pay into. At the beginning of 2018, a total £145m was lost through push payment fraud, with £358m lost due to unauthorised fraud..

How we can help you:

Additional security layers: When you have an account with Ebury, you can set up 4 eyes verification. This process means involving another pair of eyes (or up to four more pairs of eyes) into the process.

This is perfect for companies who have teams of people processing transactions, and while it primarily prevents hackers from gaining access to your information and trades, it also helps reduce human error.

What you can do:

If you receive new payment details by email, it’s important to call up your beneficiaries or bank to confirm the new payment details are accurate before you transfer anything to them.

Strong passwords:

It will take a hacker:
10 minutes to crack an 8-character, lower-case lettered password
47,000 years to crack a 15-character password with upper/lowercase letters, numbers and symbols

Back in January, there was major data breach which resulted in more than seven hundred million unique email addresses and password combinations being leaked onto a hacking forum.

Hackers can use this information to test millions of email and password combinations on popular site login pages in order to breach profiles and steal important information, such as bank details.

Using a simple password with no extra security layers is risky—using preventative means, such as encrypted passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA) are quickly becoming the sure-fire way of protecting your data. If you’re worried your data may have been compromised, check out Have I Been Pwned.

How we can help you:

Secure password set up: As a client of Ebury, you have the option to activate 2FA when logging onto our online trading platform, Ebury Online.

This involves either setting up a phone number to confirm your login via SMS, or via an authentication app (such as Google Authenticator). By adding your personal details, you can make sure that only you can log into your account.

This also means you will always be aware if anyone tries to log in as you, as you will receive a notification every time a login is requested.

What you can do:

Make sure you use different, strong passwords for each site you have an account with. In order to keep track of all different passwords, consider a password manager tool to save and protect your passwords.

Stay safe with Ebury

Our primary goal is to protect your funds and our highly secure platform ensures your funds’ safety. Your safety and security is the driving force behind every decision we make here at Ebury.

If you have any questions relating to this article, feel free to email [email protected]

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