In today’s rapidly evolving fraud landscape, complacency is a costly gamble. Those well-worn phrases—“That will never happen to me” or “We’ve always done it this way”—might feel comforting, but they’re the kind of cultural blind spots that fraudsters love. These mindsets can quietly creep into even the most robust organizations, leaving them ripe for exploitation.

The New Face of Fraud: Sophisticated, Professional, and Persistent

Gone are the days of laughable scam emails from “Nigerian princes” or poorly written pleas for bail money. Today’s fraudsters are highly organized and laser-focused. They operate in large, professional crime rings, leveraging cutting-edge technology and psychological manipulation to exploit vulnerabilities. Think ransomware attacks that cripple critical infrastructure, data breaches that compromise millions, or phishing schemes that seem almost too convincing to question.

If you think fraud is someone else’s problem, consider this: every Social Security number in the U.S. has likely been bought and sold multiple times in the past five years. Business email compromise (BEC) is now the fraud frontier, with tactics so convincing they’ve fooled even the most tech-savvy individuals. And if you think only the elderly are vulnerable, you might be surprised—BEC schemes target businesses of all sizes, using tactics like fake surveys, phishing emails, and cleverly disguised links to steal sensitive data.

Real Consequences for Real Businesses

Fraud isn’t just a nuisance; it’s a financial black hole. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), businesses lose an average of 5% of their revenue to fraud annually. That’s a staggering figure, especially when you consider that many of these losses could be mitigated with proper education and vigilance.

Take, for instance, the all-too-common phishing email promising a $25 Starbucks gift card in exchange for a quick survey. At first glance, it seems harmless. But by the time an employee has clicked the link and entered personal details, a fraudster may have collected enough information to launch a full-scale attack. Repeated password entry attempts, prompts to reset passwords, and fake account setups are just a few of the tricks bad actors use to gain access to your systems.

The Key to Prevention: Culture, Training, and Vigilance

Fraud prevention isn’t just about having the right tools—it’s about fostering a culture that takes these threats seriously. While technology solutions like spam filters, email quarantine systems, and cyber risk assessments are essential, they’re only part of the equation. The real game-changer? Education and awareness.

Consider launching regular phishing simulations to test your team’s response to potential threats. Annual fraud prevention training should be a cornerstone of your risk management strategy. Teach employees to recognize red flags: unfamiliar senders, urgent requests, odd signatures, embedded links, and unsolicited PDF attachments.

And most importantly, empower your workforce to think critically. Fraud prevention starts at the top, but it’s a team effort. When every employee understands their role in safeguarding the business, they become your first line of defense against fraud.

Don’t Wait for a Wake-Up Call

The time to act is now. Fraudsters aren’t waiting, and neither should you. Adopt a proactive approach to fraud prevention, and let go of those outdated “it won’t happen to us” mindsets. By prioritizing education, strengthening your defenses, and cultivating a culture of vigilance, you can protect your business’s bottom line—and its reputation.

Fraud Week is the perfect time to take a hard look at your organization’s readiness. Are you prepared to outsmart today’s fraudsters? Contact us today to learn how our tailored fraud prevention strategies can safeguard your business.

The RIMS Conference 2023, one of the most anticipated events in the risk management industry, brought together professionals from around the world. This year’s conference witnessed a strong return of attendees, fostering insightful conversations on the influence of technology and AI, the hardening market in some sectors, promising lead generation, and the topic of reevaluating values at risk. As risk managers grapple with the complexities of today’s economy, the conference shed light on innovative approaches to asset valuation, business interruption coverage, and risk assessment. In this blog, we will delve into five key takeaways from RIMS 2023.

1. Attendance at RIMS was Back Full Force

The RIMS Conference 2023 saw a remarkable resurgence in attendance, with professionals from diverse industries coming together to exchange knowledge and best practices. The strong turnout highlighted the industry’s commitment to continuous learning, networking, and staying updated on emerging trends in risk management. This renewed enthusiasm served as a testament to the importance of conferences like RIMS in fostering professional growth and collaboration within the field.

2. Conversations Influenced by Technology and AI

Technology and artificial intelligence (AI) took center stage at the conference, captivating attendees with their potential impact on the risk management landscape. Participants engaged in discussions on leveraging advanced analytics, machine learning algorithms, and data-driven insights to make more informed risk management decisions. The integration of technology and AI was identified as a crucial enabler for identifying emerging risks, enhancing risk assessment processes, and developing effective risk mitigation strategies.

3. Market Hardening and Cost Pressures

The prevailing market conditions, marked by increasing inflation and supply chain disruptions, led to a hardening of the insurance market in some sectors. This hardening brought forth new challenges for risk managers, necessitating a comprehensive evaluation of their risk transfer strategies. With rising costs and limited coverage options, risk managers explored innovative solutions to mitigate their organizations’ exposure, while ensuring optimal protection against potential losses. Adaptability and agility emerged as critical attributes in navigating the evolving market landscape.

4. Networking and Unique Challenges

The conference presented valuable networking opportunities, with risk managers from prominent organizations seeking assistance in asset valuation and business interruption coverage. The complexities of today’s economy have compounded the challenges faced by risk managers in assessing their true exposures. Our conversations at the conference emphasized the need for specialized services such as physical assessments, business interruption studies, drone imagery for risk assessments, and cyber risk evaluations to help organizations better understand, manage and mitigate their risks.

5. Revamping Risk Management Strategies for Values at Risk

The concept of values at risk emerged as a hot topic of discussion at the conference. Risk managers recognized the need to rethink traditional approaches to valuing physical assets, particularly large-scale industrial equipment that is difficult to source. Furthermore, the assessment of business interruption values to protect against lost profits requires a fresh perspective in light of evolving market dynamics. The conference urged risk managers to revamp their risk management strategies, embracing innovative methodologies to adapt to the current environment effectively.

The RIMS Conference 2023 served as a hub for risk management professionals to share insights, discuss industry trends, and explore solutions to pressing challenges. Attendees returned to their organizations armed with a wealth of knowledge on harnessing technology and AI, navigating a hardening market, generating promising leads, and reevaluating values at risk. As the risk management landscape continues to evolve, it is imperative for professionals to remain proactive, adaptable, and forward-thinking in their approaches. The RIMS Conference proved once again to be an indispensable platform for industry leaders.

Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) are funny things.

At their most basic, BCPs are the real-world response to the old “Hope for the best, Plan for the worst” adage.  It’s honest recognition that being stuck between a rock and hard place is better with a hammer, albeit with no guarantee that the hammer is big or small enough to be helpful.

Nonetheless, a well-conceived BCP provides peace of mind, like insurance does, with the added satisfaction that only authorship (or ownership?) brings.  The rub, of course, is that every BCP is, at the end of the day, still just a plan.  As boxer, actor, felon, playwright and corporate strategist ’Iron‘ Mike Tyson once famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Indeed.  Because sometimes pipes break in the 2^nd floor ceiling of your office and leak antifreeze everywhere.  And because, other times, there’s COVID-19.

The benefit of having a BCP plan in place to manage either situation is that, well, there is at least a plan.  And despite what Kid Dynamite says, the real truth is that any company with a plan retains, at the very least, a fighting chance to get back up after they’ve been hit.

For Lowers Risk Group, like many others, COVID hit our industry, our business – our people.  We were fortunate, though: our Business Continuity Plan was 5 years in the making.  It didn’t matter, until it did.

Back in 2015, CTO David Lowers, Chief Security Officer Joe Labrozzi and Director of IT and Security Chris Sosnoski recognized the need for our growing staff to have partially, if not fully, remote capabilities.  What was initially driven by space concerns evolved with the access to and the ability of new technology to support fully secure, remote work that reduced cost, increased efficiency and enabled greater flexibility that could support new business opportunities within Lowers Risk Group.  With this foundation in place, Lowers, Sosnoski and Labrozzi were able to take the organization’s global footprint of over 550 people (spread over 3 continents) to fully remote in less than 2 weeks with zero business interruption when COVID hit.

And though Facilities might disagree, being fully remote due to COVID made the impact of that leaky pipe one less headache to manage when stress levels are already elevated.

We asked Labrozzi and Sosnoski to tell #OurStory of transition to a fully remote work environment.  We asked them what made it possible and to share a few insights that could help other organizations with the creation and implementation of their own BCPs to author their future resilience.  Below is a transcript of our conversation.

On behalf of the entire organization – thank you both for your efforts and keeping the organization on its feet as COVID hit.  How did your teams manage this transition?

Sosnoski
Our ability to go remote during COVID was strategic and began 5 years go.  Wholesale Screening Solutions, our largest division at Lowers Risk Group, was beginning to test our space limitations.  At that time, the VA HQ had about 400 people on-site.  Additionally, the Wholesale team recognized a need that they had to hire in different areas, not just in VA HQ.  We were tasked with how to support that, and it was clear we had to embrace the cloud.  Buy-in from David and other executive leadership there was the first step.

Labrozzi
What really drove the process was what was happening in Wholesale’s Georgia office, our first off-site campus.  We needed a base to get our people into the courts to do research.  That organically began to create resiliency in our operations – rather than rent out trailers, for example, in the event of something happening, our second location offered redundancies as technology matured.  As we gained more experience managing this remote location in GA from our VA HQ, we saw it was possible to have and manage a remote workforce while still doing secure work.  We then built a series of processes around this concept that laid the foundation for more remote work, and we’ve been working at that ever since.

Sosnoski
Right before COVID hit, for example, we launched phase 1 a Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) initiative with plans to roll-out Phases 2 and 3 in the coming months.  What would have been a much more measured roll-out was accelerated by COVID.  But, had we not been building towards that – not just with the UCaaS launch, but all the work leading up to the launch – it would not have been as easy or seamless.  However, we had our BCP in place and were able to activate it,.  Our teams stepped up and, again, the full support of leadership helped make it happen.

What were the steps you were taking to build that initial foundation over 5 years?

Sosnoski
The goal was always to keep the working experience as secure and as available as possible, so it was about taking small bites at the apple.  Exploring, testing, and implementing remote training, for example.  Cloud-based email.  Our UCaaS environment.  We were able to leverage cloud resources like Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce, AWS and Zscaler to achieve this.

The complicating factor was the cost associated with it – we had to be willing and able to spend monthly on subscription services.  For a while, that was a barrier, but we continued to make the business case while moving from a hybrid environment to a cloud environment.  Transitioning the phone system to UCaaS, for example, was a two-and-a-half-year effort to make happen and now our teams are loving the flexibility it offers.  Our teams can do remote assessments and maintain contact with each other and clients easily.

How did you each manage the workload during the COVID transition to remote work?

Labrozzi
Teamwork.  At VA HQ, Chris and I have sat next to each other for years, so we have a great working relationship – that’s part of the culture at LRG, which is probably also a reason the transition was smooth.  But it’s about the quality of who you work with.  Chris’ IT team knows what needs to get done – they’re reliable and fast.  I focused on the human capital element, making sure that we were dealing effectively with any productivity concerns, making sure teams were staying connected.  We all operate from a leadership mindset and depend on each other to play our parts.

Sosnoski
The real risk in remote work is not technology, it’s management process.  My team trusts each other to get things done.  When COVID hit, we found a useful strategy was to use quick, daily stand-up meetings.  For the most part, these types of meetings continue in some capacity across all departments; I know upper management remains committed to finding one-on-one time for their direct reports.  Process is super important in all this, but equally so is everyone’s ability to do their job.

Any key takeaways to offer other organizations from your experience?

Sosnoski – I think there’s really three that worked for us:

• We started planning early and had already explored the risk environment, developed the processes that would provide us a path of least resistance to continuity and had leadership buy-in.
• We identified the right digital tools and had assessed, budgeted for and tested them as part of the plan strategically; having to do this during COVID would have been very difficult.
• We were all aligned on the work that had to be done to achieve the vision; for us that was finding a secure, scalable and available environment to perform our risk mitigation work.

Lowers Risk Group provides comprehensive enterprise risk management solutions to organizations operating in high-risk, highly regulated environments and organizations that value risk mitigation.  Our human capital and specialized industry enterprise risk management solutions protect people, brands, and profits from avoidable loss and harm.  With Lowers Risk Group you can expect a strategic, focused approach to risk assessment, compliance, and mitigation to help drive your organization forward with confidence.  Contact us.

As discussed in our most recent LinkedIn post, COVID 19 has forced companies to review and amend their operations top to bottom. And whether these changes are temporary or long-term, one thing is certain: the impact on both business and employee culture is permanent.

The best businesses right now are doing two things: 1) finding ways to stay open and 2) evaluating the future. And the best leaders of these businesses understand the value of employee training, especially in times like these: a safe, secure environment creates well-being for employees and customers, which enables more innovation with less interference. Given the current circumstances, employees want to be sure that their employer is looking out for them. The first step in achieving this (while also keeping the cash registers ringing so that your strategic plan has a future) begins with a wholistic understanding of the business risks. That is, surveying.

While traditional consulting and surveying is simply not plausible right now, recent advancements in technology and encrypted video have made virtual surveying a viable option.  For businesses considering a virtual survey, the team at Lowers & Associates has compiled a list of insights and considerations that may be helpful in your discovery process:

• The primary benefit of virtual surveying is that it can be conducted anytime, anywhere. With no travel, virtual surveying is one of the best ways forward-thinking businesses can control costs.
• Virtual surveys are less disruptive to the organization and provide quicker report-in-hand turn around. This can be a massive advantage for organizations pressed for time or with reduced staff capacity.
• Always a collaborative exercise and NEVER the “lesser of two evils,” virtual surveys can often provide deeper insights than those conducted in-person (sometimes business owners feel more at ease with a physical distance between themselves and the surveyor).
• Rapid advances in technology come with a learning curve. Leading risk mitigation consultants should be versed in a suite of technology applications to successfully execute a virtual survey.
• Information is information, right? Sort of.  Asking the right questions matters, knowing how to analyze the answers makes all the difference, and consistency is king.  Virtual or not, surveyors reviewing requested documentation and/or an audio/visual recording of the survey should be able to turn around the same exact results.
• Consistency is key in both business and surveying. Virtual surveyors should be able to hand over responsibilities to another surveyor if one should fall ill or become unavailable. Process can be both a businesses’ arrow and its Achilles Heel!
• Virtual surveying should include an ability to perform the following:
  • Pre- survey meetings
  • Staff competency and interviews
  • Reviews of:
    • Day to day operations
    • Site physical security
    • Insurance
    • Fiduciary Controls
    • Policy & Procedure
    • Vault construction
    • Crime and illegal activity (Local and Countrywide)
  • Facility Design Consultation
  • Follow up consultation meetings

Adaptation is crucial for businesses during this real-time reinvention of the workplace, and for 30 years, Lowers & Associates has pushed the boundaries of technology to keep those workplaces safe (this includes virtual surveying). #OurWork #Together has also always been collaborative, and so we encourage you to view and share the insights, stories and applicable tips that our team has been publishing at the Lowers & Associates LinkedIn page. If you have any questions, please contact us.

Even before COVID-19 created the social and economic challenges we are currently working through, brick and mortar business owners large and small understood a basic concept that most of the world wasn’t thinking much about: whenever people gather in close proximity, risk is present. The duality here, of course, is that human nature craves connection, but it also endeavors to avoid risk. Or it chooses to ignore it.

Unfortunately, many of the risks business owners face can be unseen, both for themselves and their customers, and those risks can’t be ignored. Regardless of the type of business, the moment the doors open, unique security-related policy and procedure challenges await. The best businesses implement their security-related policy and procedure measures seamlessly – they become part of the experience. This experience is created by design to ensure the health and safety of those both rendering services (staff) and those transacting payments (customers). If insurance teaches us anything, though, it’s that too often ignorance is bliss until reality hits. And if the security design is bad, the claim is worse.

As restrictions are slowly lifted and businesses around the world contemplate re-opening, every owner – from the small neighborhood grocery store with one door to the 100-floor commercial city building with 15 exits – should be using their time right now to examine what re-opening in the current normal looks like. Any measures that have been developed previously to keep customers, employees and visitors safe may need to be re-established or, at a minimum, revisited to conform with current recommendations from both scientific and governmental authorities.

It can’t be stressed enough, though: revisiting (or in some cases rethinking) security-related policy or procedure isn’t something that happens just because a huge reality event like COVID-19 creates global upheaval.  Practicing good habits requires consistency, and it’s with that in mind that our team is currently sharing a series of insights, stories and applicable tips on security that any industry can use over on the Lowers & Associates LinkedIn page.

To provide some guidance for those reevaluating their security measures or that are specifically focused on re-opening, I’ve created a list of 10 suggested actions ANY business can take to remove risk and eliminate potential for loss at any time.

1. Reassess security resource allocation based on operational need and risk.

If you have a business portfolio with multiple locations, consideration should be given to the specific business environment, nature of the threats, existence of any unusual circumstances, and the capacity of local law enforcement to respond.

2.Limit the number of entry/exit points for employees and visitors.

Tightly control ingress and egress for safety and security optimization. Examine operational feasibility before implementation.

3. Consider the reception area.

If security personnel are employed at the location, what role will they now play at the reception area to assist in the enforcement of new practices?

4. Access control measures and mechanisms dependent on fingerprint or a punch code require new safety protocols to be implemented.

This includes visitor management software and the use of tablets for registration.

5. CCTV coverage designed for cash handling or robbery identification should have expanded focal points to include more than just a face shot.

With the use of face masks becoming more frequent for the foreseeable future, at least one camera angle should include the entire body, including shoes. (criminals typically do not ditch their shoes after committing a robbery)

6. Re-evaluate security post orders.

The post orders must reflect any new duties performed and have a sound rationale for deviations. It is possible that actual security posts change based on organizational necessity. Examine any vulnerabilities that exist and how to overcome the risks.

7. Provide written notice to all employees if the security policies or procedures are being altered.

Even if these changes are temporary, this is necessary to ensure expectations are clear.

8. Initiate and document COVID-19 safety training.

Specifically, for security personnel and/or designated employees working the “front lines” of your business. This can expand to all staff as a general safety bulletin and acknowledgement.

9. Expand workplace violence policy (e.g. domestic violence prevention and response) to include all employees working from home.

Work with the Human Resources Department to provide “hotlines” or other resources available should assistance be required. In addition, identify and assess potential insider threats, as more employees and contractors are working remote.

10. Develop a brief but informative training program on basic techniques to de-escalate aggressive behavior in the workplace.

This is especially important for those business that are “customer facing” (e.g. retail/hospitality) or for businesses with a large number of on-site staff and visitors.