More cases of embezzlement, revenge of laid-off employees, and also an increase in the number of bank robberies. These can be the consequences of the current economic crisis, according to the participants of Tuesday’s panel discussion of the Czech branch of Asis Internacional that unites security experts.
“With regard to the current economic situation, banks are expecting an increase in armed robberies. Consequently, several projects have been launched since last year with the aim to discourage potential perpetrators,” said Petr Lédl, head of security at Raiffeisenbank.
Radio waves to track money
Although it is almost impossible to gain details on particular measures, Lédl said they involve, for example, the implementation of new functions of security camera systems that are able to show the face of a perpetrator who’s wearing a mask, new ways of reporting crime to the police or tracking stolen money with the help of radio waves. Besides that, banks are trying to have only the necessary amount of cash in their branches, according to Lédl.
“There has been an increase in cases when the perpetrator took just several thousands or nothing at all,” Pavla Langová from Česká spořitelna said. However, the bank is not planning to increase its security. And besides mentioning the use of time locks on cash desks that do not allow even a bank employee to operate with cash after a certain time limit, the banks did not want to go into details regarding its security measures.
According to Lédl, Czech banks have to pay more attention to attacks on the internet – last year’s flood of web phishing can happen again any time.
Beware of the laid-off employees!
Security managers are expecting problems also in connection with the mass lay-offs. “A car parts maker laid off, for example, four members of one family. The fifth one, who stayed in the company, then embezzled hundreds of thousands of crowns,” Michal Moroz, managing director of Moroz & Partner, a company dealing with fraud in companies, gave an example from among recent events.
Besides traditional theft, bribes that employees take from suppliers that they have chosen for their company, represent another problem. And not only that. “A popular trick of payroll clerks is to create a virtual employee, on whose account they later send their salary,” Moroz said.
According to Michal Fábera, the director of security consultancy Orange Group, a common revenge of a laid-off employee also consists of selling internal information. “Every computer today has a USB port. The only thing a perpetrator needs is a memory stick with a minimum capacity, and they can draw information,” Fábera said.
