5 Technology Resources From the ACFE
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GUEST BLOGGER
Colin May, CFE
Adjunct Professor, Stevenson University
Over the last 12 months, I have been providing resources to discover and re-discover topics related to technology. This year has put tremendous emphasis on the use of technology and upping our tech game as fraud examiners.
This is the fourth and final part of my tech-focused articles this year on ACFE Insights to help fraud examiners and investigators learn more and dive deeper into the world of tech. By bringing these resources to the community, it can help grow our knowledge base in this area, especially with the exponential growth in online fraud schemes and the increased need for technology-enabled investigations. By becoming immersed in the language, trends, and issues, fraud examiners are better able to deliver actionable prevention mechanisms, recover funds and conduct more efficient fraud examinations. Be sure to check out the entire series.
In this last installment, I explore some of the valuable resources available directly through the ACFE's website. There are so many good publications, articles and tools available through the website that I cannot highlight them all, but this will hopefully provoke further exploration!
1. The Anti-Fraud Technology Benchmarking Report
This report is the culmination of a 19-question survey of ACFE members that began in February 2019 and ultimately led to more than 1,000 responses. The results are illuminating. Not only did it report that more than 60% of organizations use data analytics to identify or detect anomalies or outliers, but 25% expect to adopt artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies within the next two years.
The findings also discuss important topics like data analytics by risk area, sources of data used in the analysis, and the use of software and technology in fighting fraud. By gaining a better sense of how others are using technology in their practices, CFEs can grow in understanding the cyber and technology issues, as well as begin to generate creative use-case scenarios and applications for their own company, agency or mission area.
2. The Security and Utility of Blockchain Technology
Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology are hot topics. The underlying fundamentals can be difficult to understand, but this article briefly summarizes many of the significant issues that fraud examiners need to know, especially as it relates to auditing and authenticating data on the blockchain. This is critical because more and more companies — and government agencies — are exploring putting information on blockchains.
3. The Anatomy of a Business Email Compromise Scam
With the rise of stay-at-home orders amid a growing global pandemic, business email compromise (BEC) schemes took off in extraordinary ways. It morphed, changed, adapted and became one of the go-to scams of COVID-19.
This podcast episode describes how one small church was duped into sending nearly $2 million to a fraudster. BECs are important to identify quickly because of the rapid nature of the money movement since much of the information is usually in electronic form. This podcast gives some ideas on how to handle these types of cases.
4. Supplementing Traditional Investigations With Online Resources
So much of the world is online and digital now. Fraud examiners need to stay current on the latest trends and information that are available online. This free (for ACFE members), on-demand webinar discusses the importance of using online investigative techniques, in combination with traditional fraud examination, investigation and audit techniques, to help provide the most accurate picture. Taught at the basic level, it illustrates the various techniques and resources that are useful for fraud examiners.
5. Fraud Magazine’s enormous article database
Fraud Magazine® has a wealth of useful articles to track the latest trends and issues facing fraud examiners. It provides excellent case studies to showcase the skills and lessons learned from CFEs and anti-fraud practitioners around the globe.
The scope of articles demonstrates how the fraud examination profession has evolved and continues to stay ahead of the curve on significant developments across the fraud prevention, detection and recovery landscape. On the website, you can sort by pre-populated topics, like case studies, data analytics and investigation, among others. By using the search function of the website, members can access more than 400 articles related to “technology,” and over 2,400 with the term “digital.” “Cyber” or “online” will generate more than 280 and 690 articles, respectively. The wealth of knowledge in this portal is incredible.
There’s no doubt that 2020 will go down in history as a wild, crazy, unpredictable year. But hopefully, this series of blogs have helped you develop your tech knowledge, discover new frontiers and bring opportunities to enhance your cyber anti-fraud credentials. But this is just the beginning, and the resources presented here are merely a scratch on the surface.
CFEs need to remain on top of this constantly evolving, ever-changing and very fast area of practice — and life. Technology issues can no longer remain the domain of a few specialists because it is an essential component of our profession. Here’s to upping your tech game in 2021 and beyond!
Colin May, CFE, is an Adjunct Professor of Forensic Studies and Criminal Justice at Stevenson University in Owings Mills, Md. For over 10 years, he was a Special Agent with the U.S. Government. He is a Certified Fraud Examiner and a Certified Cyber Crime Examiner (charter member); He may be reached at cmay3231@stevenson.edu. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
