Businesses can take steps to ensure a fraud-free Fringe - Jude McCorry

As businesses, either local to Edinburgh or those travelling to be part of the festivities, look to embrace the buzz that comes with festival fever, the sheer scale of the event can make them vulnerable to fraudsters.

For most the Fringe is a hassle-free experience, but a rogue few can spoil the fun, and the bottom line. Ticketing scams, although uncommon, can ruin the Fringe experience, and leave businesses who might have been organising Fringe trips as client treats or teambuilding activities out of pocket, or worse, unable to operate. There is, however, a lot that businesses can do to protect themselves against fraud as far as possible.

At the Cyber and Fraud Centre – Scotland, we work with businesses to first identify and alert them to live threats. We work alongside them to ensure their systems and processes are robust against cyber and fraud crime and we support them with incident response should they fall victim to a cyber or fraud crime.

The types of fraud businesses are likely to experience at peak holiday and festive periods include look-alike and unauthorised websites, and, with fake sponsorship ‘opportunities’ also on the rise, businesses need to do their due diligence when approached about becoming a sponsor.

I also urge businesses to be mindful of the legitimacy of accommodation offers during the Fringe when booking stays for staff or clients. Unusually cheap accommodation offers or ones asking for high deposits should be treated with suspicion. We saw this in action recently as booking.com issued warnings of increases in scams of between 500 and 900 per cent where AI is used to create phishing emails with booking links to accommodation that never actually existed, and with ever more convincing imagery.A threat that we see year-round is Business Email Compromise, or BEC. This method of scamming is becoming a more and more common, particularly within a business environment. BEC involves fraudsters using fake but convincingly designed emails to compromise email accounts and therefore potentially access sensitive data. With reduced staffing over holiday periods, this is one to watch out for.

With fake invoices being an example of BEC likely to be used during the Fringe, the Cyber and Fraud Centre – Scotland is encouraging organisations to ensure that their staff have received robust cybercrime and fraud prevention training and are aware of how to identify and respond to potential security threats in the workplace.

My advice to businesses to stay safe during the Fringe? Begin with putting in place well-developed and tested cybersecurity systems in all year round. Education and communication are foundational to being well-prepared against the threat of cyber crime and fraud. Among all the doom and gloom, we must remember that ticket fraud remains fairly uncommon. We would encourage Edinburgh’s businesses to stay aware of the cyber climate around them, implement robust security measures and ensure their staff are sufficiently trained to give themselves the best possible chance of enjoying a Fringe Festival free from fraud.

Jude McCorry, CEO of Cyber and Fraud Centre – Scotland