Given the hundreds of daily maritime financial transactions, it is increasingly important to safeguard confidential data and transactions from cyber crimes such as fraud, and phishing.
Cybersecurity breaches, fraud, and phishing attacks targeting financial data have the potential to significantly impact a company’s financial health, not to mention its reputation. Managing these risks poses a considerable challenge, particularly as cybercriminals employ increasingly sophisticated techniques.
Moreover, companies face additional risks when engaging with stakeholders across diverse legal and regulatory jurisdictions, each with varying standards for cybersecurity and data protection. Utilising a trusted service provider that combines software solutions with human expertise is a reliable strategy for mitigating these risks effectively.
The cost of cybercrime
Cybercrime has been identified as one of the top concerns in anti-financial crime compliance for operations directors and senior management, along with Know Your Customer (KYC), sanctions, and money laundering, according to a recent customer survey conducted by DA-Desk.
Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting maritime as a lucrative sector and are creating more nuanced and sophisticated methods to steal data, change remittance details or disrupt business operations. Fraudulent correspondence can be challenging to spot for busy teams and can lead to massive losses. A 2023 report by law firm HFW and CyberOwl reveals that the average cost of a cyber attack for a company is about $500,000 – a hefty hit for any company.
Marcura’s DA-Desk enables companies to automate and streamline due diligence and mitigate the risk of fraud, and cyber risks by checking the accuracy of remittance information, screening every port call, including every appointment, every proforma disbursement account (PDA), and every final disbursement account (FDA). As a result, over the past few years, Marcura has prevented over 100 cases of fraud and phishing through DA-Desk’s transaction screening and data management systems and has saved customers more than $5 million from fraud and phishing.
A single character can make a difference
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), people are more likely to fall victim to fraud or cyber offences than any other crime because fraudulent correspondences can be incredibly hard to spot.
Cyber fraud for financial transactions can appear authentic, just altering the recipient’s bank details to divert freight payments, hire, cash to master, and ship agents’ disbursements.
Generally, the email addresses used by the scammers are slightly different from the real ones; in most instances, a single letter is either added or omitted. This may not be visible to the naked eye, however with DA-Desk’s automated screening process such errors are identified, which in turn will ensure that companies money doesn’t go to the wrong hands.
Keeping up-to-date
Cybercriminals can take advantage of the complexities companies face with anti-financial crime compliance. For example, teams must stay updated on thousands of global agents, manage numerous voyage-related parties across various jurisdictions, and address the unclear ownership of ships and assets. Continuous monitoring is crucial due to the ever-present risk of agents being cleared one day and not the next, leading to escalating compliance and financial risks. Additionally, screening agents is time-consuming, especially when essential information is lacking. The manpower required for such a process is huge and not all companies have the resources or knowledge to perform the required checks. Service providers like Marcura’s DA-Desk offer the necessary scale, resources, and customer base to effectively mitigate these risks.
A company’s cybersecurity is only as strong as its weakest link – cybersecurity risks can be introduced by stakeholders or third parties if they are not doing their due diligence. In the Marcura survey, 72% of companies found it challenging to complete required counterparty, KYC, and other AFC checks for processing disbursement account (DA) payments.
Streamlined solutions can help with such challenges. DA-Desk’s integrated compliance service handles various tasks including trade and economic sanctions compliance, KYC checks, bank account verification, information security compliance, payment approval, transaction monitoring, AFC screening, Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance, and validation checks for disbursement accounts.
Peace of mind
Ensuring cyber risk protection for DAs demands a meticulous and time-intensive approach, as any misstep could impact a company’s bottom line, reputation, and business continuity. With DA-Desk, companies and their staff can have greater peace of mind that fraud and cyber scams can be detected and prevented. It can actively automate and refine due diligence processes, freeing up staff to work on other value-add tasks, minimise the risk of fraud, and confidently demonstrate regulatory compliance.
To learn more about “how to reduce maritime anti-financial crime compliance risks”, download our e-book.
Read our our recent post on the best questions to ask when you choose a disbursement accounting automation partner.