Small businesses including co-operatives can register for a free fraud awareness webinar run by the Co-operative Bank and the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce.
The webinar runs at 11am on Wednesday 8 July. Featuring experts from the Bank’s fraud and cyber security team, as well as Greater Manchester Police and the Federation of Small Business (FSB), it will offer advice on fraud and cybercrime, which cost UK businesses £824m in 2019.
Participants will hear from Michael McGuinness, a specialist in cyber security, and Debbie Jenkinson, a fraud specialist and education leader, who will look at current trends, including how criminals are targeting businesses.
Det Supt Neil Jones will talk about his work at the Cyber Resilience Centre, a not-for-profit helping businesses of all sizes with expert advice, tailored training and cost-effective services. Emma Potts, a fraud prevention officer from GMP’s Cyber & Economic Crime Awareness Section, will also give first-hand experience of supporting business victims of fraud and cybercrime.
Simon Edmondson, member advisor for Manchester and north Cheshire at the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), will join the panel to share how the FSB has been supporting small businesses during the pandemic.
The session will introduce participants to key fraud, scams and cyber-attacks that a business could be targeted with and receive tips, support and guidance from the experts to help them respond to such incidents.
They will receive practical information that could help them prevent being targeted by fraudsters and will be able to submit questions to the panel of experts before the session.
Sarah Barker, relationship banking director at the Bank, said: “When so many are still weathering the impacts of the coronavirus the additional impacts of a fraud, scam or cyber-attack could have a significantly greater impact… There is a constant need to be vigilant for scams and frauds but with so much to consider for small businesses as many re-open and recommence operations, opportunistic criminals could try to take advantage.
“We want to do what we can to support SMEs who could be targeted with what are increasingly sophisticated and complex scams and fraud attempts. In partnership with the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce and with the expertise of speakers from the Greater Manchester Police and Federation of Small Business we hope we can give practical tips and guidance that might help small businesses from falling victim.”
A recording will be available on the Bank’s website.
