Cyber Security Expert Asks: What is the Weakest Link in your Cyber Security Plan?
When the finance chief of a London hedge fund got an urgent phone call about possible fraud on a Friday afternoon just as he was preparing to leave work, he honestly thought he was doing the right thing by giving the caller the information requested. Wouldn’t any decent CFO want to stop fraud if it was in his power to do so? That way, he could rest easy for the weekend, knowing he had saved the company from damage. Imagine the feeling in the pit of his stomach when he turned on his computer Monday morning to find that 742,668 pounds ($1.2 million) was missing!
That’s what happened to Thomas Meston of Fortelus Capital Management LLP in December of 2013. He received a phone call from someone claiming to be from Coutts, the London-based hedge fund’s bank, and the caller warned him there may have been fraudulent activity on the account. Meston was reluctant, but agreed to use the bank’s smart card security system to generate codes for the caller to cancel 15 suspicious payments.
