Occupational Fraud should never be taken lightly, especially among small business owners. Luckily, there are various cost-effective controls available if you know where to look.
Because they have limited resources, small businesses are particularly vulnerable to fraud.
Don’t Be Another Unsuspecting Victim
My business manages a lot of accounts. What else can I do to make sure fraud isn’t happening under my nose?
The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners analyzed 1,483 cases of fraud for its 2014 Global Fraud Study, Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse. The losses from these cases totaled $3 billion.
“Smaller businesses have limited financial and human resources, making them uniquely susceptible to fraud,” the report states. “The median loss per fraud at a small business is $154,000.”
In nearly one-third of cases, victim organizations lacked the appropriate internal controls to prevent fraud.
“We’re accumulating so much data that it’s getting impossible to get a grasp on all of it,” explained Welker. “We’ve been accumulating data pretty much since the 1980s, when we first came out with the PC. Now all that data is just sitting out there and to get a control on it, you need specialized programs to be able to do that.”
Check out this video to find out how IT audit experts can mine data to detect fraud in your organization.