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How not to fall prey to a cyber attack

Pillow May chartered accountant fell prey to the actions of a hacker over the summer. Jessica Pillow, managing director, explains how to avoid the same fate.

I was boarding a boat from Vienna to Slovakia for a summer holiday tour of the Danube Jessica Pillow when I received the call that every accounting practice manager dreads. It was one of my team alerting me to the fact they’d discovered a cyber fraud that morning. Let me tell you a few more details, in the hope that you can ensure your practice would have sufficient controls in place not to fall victim.

My team member had been receiving emails, in the normal style, asking her to pay supplier invoices for one of our clients for whom we perform bookkeeping services. The team member paid the suppliers despite them being new and the payment amounts being over the normal prescribed maximum payment amount, which meant it had to be split in two. She did check that she should be splitting the payment due to the payment limit, but by email, which of course went to the fraudster rather than the client.