The current crisis has created a wealth of opportunity for fraudsters and other ne’er-do-wells.

Every finance, Shared Services and GBS executive I have talked to since the start of the crisis has reported a much higher rate of fraud attempts and over the past several weeks, reports of cyberattacks have increased at a rate of three to five times compared to pre-Covid.

The human behavioural changes and adaptions have had to be swift and in all aspects of business. Our risk management approach and our policies and controls have not moved so fast and it is leaving companies vulnerable.

User access risk has been highlighted by external audit as one of the many risks that is being exacerbated by this current crisis, not least because of staffing changes, furloughs and home working.

We have put together a short blog post on this topic and the implications on the broader “Joiners Movers Leavers” process.

Our ‘Something To Consider’ snippets are framed as small, digestible, ‘dashes of insight’ around the pillars of what we define as “World Class Finance” – Process Optimization, Financial Control and Compliance, and Risk Assurance, all underpinned by technology enablement and integration.