NOT FOR COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS!

If you have a personal bank account, yes, your money is safe from online banking fraud. When it happens, it’s an enormous hassle and you lose an average of about a hundred hours in getting everything fixed. Federal regulations compel banks to make good on losses to personal accounts, however they occur. 

However, the same is not true of commercial accounts that are accessed online. Tens of millions of dollars were stolen from small business accounts in 2009, and the FDIC says that this crime grew 5X in the last 12 months! View the IC3 2009 Annual Report Here (PDF). Cities, school districts, public libraries, and small businesses—by now, every type of small or medium-sized organization has been victimized by the eastern European hacker gangs behind this frightening new crime wave. The FBI is tracking hundreds of cases.

The bad guys target accounts at small- and medium-sized banks, which, they have learned, do not have the advanced online banking cyber-fraud controls of the very largest banks.  Many of these banks do not take responsibility for these attacks. They point at the fact that it was the customer’s network that was compromised, not their own, so it’s not the bank’s fault.  Your organization’s accounts could be next!

Here is a map with many known US victims of cyber heists, note that there are probably twice as many that are not on the map.

And this is a short TV program that explains the problem, talks to victims and discusses solutions.

There is even a support group of organizations that are the victims of cyberheists.  They have their own website where they lobby for legislation to have business accounts also covered from online banking fraud.  Read more about the ‘Your Money Is Not Safe In The Bank’ support group here: http://www.yourmoneyisnotsafeinthebank.org