Singapore is an excellent place to start a business. Our strong and stable economy, high level of connectivity to the region and beyond, strong government support and competitive corporate tax rates make it ideal to start a company or base a regional hub here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
An unfortunate side effect of Singapore\u2019s vibrant economy is that businesses are increasingly becoming a target for opportunistic scammers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the past year, scammers targeted businesses regardless of size and industry, and their methods range from the seemingly harmless to very sophisticated. Earlier this year, the Singapore Police Force, together with United Arab Emirates authorities and INTERPOL,\u00a0recovered over $300,000 from international scammers who had targeted the staff of a product trading company based in Singapore<\/a>\u00a0using a business email compromise (BEC) scam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Knowing how your business may be scammed is the first step to protecting you and your employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When a piece of communication, such as an email or an instant message is intentionally designed to appear to come from a legitimate source, that is known as phishing. Phishing scams often take advantage of the trust victims have in the purported sources to obtain valuable personal information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it comes to businesses, a particularly insidious type of phishing scam targeting senior executives are known as business email compromise scams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Singapore Business Federation (SBF) recently held\u00a0Singapore\u2019s first coordinated phishing exercise<\/a>\u00a0and the results showed that many employees across multiple sectors were highly susceptible to phishing emails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For two weeks from 15 to 28 February this year, phishing emails pretending to be account and security alerts were sent to over 4,500 employees across five business sectors including Retail, Healthcare and Medical. In the exercise, more than 30% of the emails were opened, and 17% of the recipients clicked on a phishing link. This is 8% higher than the global phishing rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another worrying problem is that only about 5% of the employees reported the phishing attempt \u2013 which is lower than the global average reporting rate of 18%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The findings also showed that the click rate between large companies and SMEs was closely tied. Despite the resource advantage larger companies may have in terms of providing cybersecurity training, it appears that both large and small companies were equally likely to fall for phishing attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read Also: <\/em><\/strong>8 Things Businesses Can Do To Avoid Malware And Cyber Attacks Holding Your Company To A Ransom<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n There have been many scams involving impersonating a government official, such as an MAS authority figure, a police inspector, immigration officer or a staff of the courts. According to the Singapore Police Force, it was among the top 5 scam types in Singapore last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, when it comes to businesses, scammers are more likely to impersonate buyers and suppliers. In September last year, the SPF reported that\u00a0businesses providing IT equipment and accessories were being targeted by scammers<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In such scams, businesses would be contacted by scammers impersonating staff from reputed organisations looking to buy large quantities of IT equipment and accessories at short notice. Knowing the businesses would not have sufficient stock to fulfil the order, the fake buyers would also provide contact details of fake suppliers that the businesses could order from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, using forged screenshots implying full payment to the victim, the fake buyers would con the victim to send money to the fake suppliers. The victim would only realise the scam after checking their accounts and realising that the fake buyer had not made any payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n#1 Phishing Scams \/ Business Email Compromise Scams<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
#2 Impersonation Scams<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n