Lately I have seen on Linkedin several posts using strong words as a title: “10 rules….”, “Golden principles …”, etc, so today, I will try not to take that path, especially that this is not the result of a documented study or some lab test. Instead i would like to share with you my view on what is necessary for setting up the ground for a sound Fraud risk strategy and invite you to comment upon it.

   A couple of weeks ago ,at a Fraud management event, a peer from Denmark told me that his organization was the victim of a cybercrime  and the investigation revealed that the fraudsters might be from Eastern Europe.

He was convinced that the rationale for committing the Fraud was the low level of income made by the fraudsters in their country, hence the need to score the difference by “other means”. As per example, a Danish would not commit a Fraud, because he already has a good living standard.

To some extent he might be right, but maybe this was applicable if there was a matter of surviving such as assuring some basic needs(water, food, etc) which is not the case here.

I agree that there is a huge income gap Eastern vs. Western European countries, but that does not make automatically millions of people “proper candidates” for Fraud.

In my opinion, Education or more correctly, lack of proper Education, might be a better explanation. When I say Education, this should not be read necessarily as an abundance of information, but more as: setting up values, implementing and respecting them in daily life and more important not just when someone is watching you.

I believe that Education gives a person at least the comfort that he is useful for the society and part of a community, so it will be much difficult for him to rationalize a Fraud, in case he is thinking of committing one.

If we look also at the statistics, we can see that the Nordics invest significantly in Education, while the Eastern countries do not seem to find the right track.

So, before you start designing your Fraud risk strategy, you should assess the existence of values within the organization & the level of compliance and then start drafting a program to “fix or enhance” this first.

I would suggest that when drafting the program you should look for things like: helping/teaching other without any return expectation, volunteering, recycling, energy saving, planting tree, etc and most important acting upon IT. Senior Management or You might be a good example to “Give the Tone from the Top”.

My message to You is: Draft your values and be the First to use them !

Alin Becheanu – President of APCF