How a granny can combat phone scammers 👵🏻

Atom CTO November newsletter

Welcome to the latest Atom CTO newsletter where we share tech news and stories for founders and entrepreneurs who are starting and scaling businesses.

Editor’s Note

Scammers seems to be the topic of the month which is never a good thing.

I’m currently out in the US and the number of people telling me about their experience of being duped by unscrupulous scammers has been quite unsettling not only because the scams seem to be pretty elaborate but also because over here, there’s not much recourse (unlike in the UK).

Take this example from a good friend Alicia Butler-Pierre who had her bank account drained days before she left the US on a business trip. Alicia is an intelligent, switched-on person but the scammers got her at the end of the day, when she was in the middle of other things and had a huge amount of information on her which made her think that her bank was really calling her.

I’ve seen more and more sophisticated ruses, the COO of one of Atom’s clients had his voice cloned and a WhatsApp voice note was left for an employee who was switched on enough to realise that the speech patterns weren’t correct. We’ve had our own attempts at scams at Atom where new employees have been targeted on WhatsApp by people posing as me and requesting they buy iTunes vouchers.

Scammers are here to stay, we will have to get used to them but there are a number of good practices we can put in place to mitigate the risk of losing money:

• Be careful what you post on social media: scammers will look out to see if you’ve recently raised funds or if people have joined your company. You don’t always need to broadcast lots of detail and when you do make announcements, tell your employees to be extra vigilant.

• Put robust processes in place for sensitive parts of your business: there was a famous scam recently where a company was scammed out of $25M by AI deepfakes during a Teams meeting. That was an elaborate set-up but still, if the person had called the CFO directly to confirm the transfer, things could have been different.

• Use multi-factor authentication and have good password discipline. Use a password manager and make sure that you use single-sign on where you can.

• Make sure your company has security training. Security training is cheap and effective and you can keep an eye on who in your company is failing / ignoring the tests. If in doubt, talk to your managed services provider, they usually bundle this into their service.

• Monitor the dark web: this doesn’t have to be nefarious, use tools like Have I Been Pwnd to see if your emails have been breached and make sure you change passwords if you find an email has been compromised. For companies there are other tools that can alert you to exactly what data is out there on you.

• A personal favourite of mine is that if you have a business that deals with sensitive data, allow your users to set a security phrase that you can then add to emails that you send out so that they know that your emails are legit.

• Remember that everything can be spoofed, your email, your phone number, your voice and even your face so if you are senior in your organisation alert your team to possible scams, I give my phone number to all new employees so that they know if a request is coming from someone fake. Also reduce the ways in which you will contact people - have policies to say that you’ll only contact or call people through Teams or Slack.

• Trust nothing! This is generally the best way to be in this new age. If you get a phone call from a bank, put the phone down and call them back on a number that is publicly available. Don’t do important things like move money around when you are occupied with other things etc.

It is sad that we have to deal with all of these possible attacks but with tech getting more sophisticated we are going to have to get used to a new normal…

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting Insights

Latest articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

Sick of all those Teams calls? Now you can send your clone! Microsoft will soon let you clone your voice for conference calls 👯‍♀️

Forget MoSCoW prioritisation, the ‘Must-have’ bucket is always a lie because features are never a must-have, it’s what those features are supposed to make possible that’s a must-have. Read the full article to combat the fixed-scope thinking of MoSCoW. 🚋

Mobile network operator O2 has just launched a chatbot to hassle scammers. The AI Granny mimics an old lady who is keen to chat about cats and knitting in order to waster scammers’ time. 👵🏻

With the National Insurance Contribution changes coming into effect from next year, many companies are starting to rethink how they take on talent. Read our article Why now might be the perfect time to hire a fractional CTO. 👨🏻‍💻

Thinking like a mathematician: David Bessis says that maths is a dialogue between reason and instinct, and that maths taught in schools puts too much emphasis on the logical. 🧮

Atom CTO Podcasts

Best piece of advice you’ve been given
As we approach the end of another year, let’s look back at least year’s recap of podcasts guests sharing the best pieces of advice they have ever received. 🦉

Never work harder than your boss
Listen to the podcast interview with Nadine Lewis about the power of employee feedback and how to make positive changes. 📈

FoodLlama: Being an immigrant founder in the UK
Hear from founder Damilare Ogunleye about building a personalised food platform which learns specific food preferences and shopping behaviour promises. 🦙

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