Preventing Fraud in the Era of Remote Work

by Antonio Romero, Staff Associate II

Posted on May 9, 2023

Remote work has become more prevalent within organizations within the last few years. Remote work has many benefits such as increased productivity and a decrease in turnover. However, there are additional risks regarding fraud associated with remote work. The main risks are the increase in communication through email and data being stored within the cloud instead of on-site.

 The following steps can be implemented by non-profits to help prevent fraud:

Tone at the top: The board of directors and management should develop a good attitude towards internal controls. They should follow the internal controls in place and encourage employees to do the same. This will trickle down to the employees and be consistent at all levels of the organization. This will foster an ethical environment and will lead to the prevention of fraud.

Provide anti-fraud and data security training: The organization should conduct training regularly for all employees at every level of the organization. It should discuss specific fraud threats being identified and ways to prevent them. This is especially important within a company with remote employees. Phishing scams can be used to gain massive amounts of data if one employee accidentally clicks on a bad link. It is imperative that the organization educates employees on potential threats to mitigate that risk.

Setting up IT controls: The organization should implement IT controls to separate duties and limit access to data. Separating duties within an organization minimizes the opportunity for an employee to commit or conceal fraud. Limiting data access will prevent employees from storing critical data in their personal storage and prevent data from being obtained through cyber-attacks.

As you can see, the main area of risk within remote work is data protection. Although these steps will not eliminate fraud completely, they will help mitigate the risk associated with them. In this business climate, it is always important to keep reassessing the risk of fraud and what can be done to mitigate it.

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