Workplace Fraud: How to Investigate

Fraud in the workplace is top-of-mind for many corporate investigators. In fact when we polled our own client base in October of 2019 as to what kind of corporate investigations they are most often seeing, Fraud rose to the top of the list with 54% of respondents saying that they Always or Often are dealing with cases of Fraud.

The Global problem of Workplace Fraud

Magnet Forensics clients are right to worry about workplace fraud. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners 2020 Report to the Nations: Global Study on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, the typical fraud case in 2020 lasted 14 months before detection, and the average loss per case for an organization was $1,509,000. With more and more organizations transitioning their storage and services to the cloud, fraudsters have new vulnerabilities to exploit in organizations — unless those organizations are prepared to investigate and examine fraud in these environments.

Looking at some other statistics from the ACFE’s 2020 Report, they also paint a very real picture as to how serious of a threat workplace fraud is:

• $4.5 trillion was lost to workplace fraud globally each year.
• Organizations can lose an average of 5% of revenue to fraud
• Creation and alteration of fraudulent electronic documents are some of the most common concealment methods used by bad actors
• 1 in 5 organizations lose more than $1 million a year to fraud

Digital Tools for Investigating Workplace Fraud

As technology advances to victimize organizations, so too technology must advance to protect and safeguard organizations. Magnet AXIOM Cyber is a modern digital forensics platform tailored to meet the needs of today’s companies that have embraced technology including the latest in cloud computing, geographically distributed workforces with the shared network backbones, and use of IOT devices as a mission-critical part of their business.

Watch this video from our Forensic Consultant, Tarah Melton, as she walks you through how you can use Magnet AXIOM Cyber to investigate fraud.

How Magnet AXIOM Cyber can help

Here are some other ways that our customers use Magnet AXIOM Cyber to investigate Fraud:

• Timeline – Quickly establish a timeline to pinpoint events of fraudulent activity and use them as a starting point for your investigation
• Artifacts-First Approach – AXIOM Cyber’s artifacts-first approach surfaces hidden or buried files no matter when they are saved
• Reporting – Easily produce reports and share evidence with non-technical stakeholders so they can easily see the data exactly how your forensics team sees it
• Deleted Files – Search both allocated and unallocated space and free queue (for Macs) by carving for deleted data or traces of data
• Search – Focus on the evidence that matters by quickly finding keywords and evidence of interest with advanced searches and filtering

Use Magnet AXIOM Cyber for your next fraud investigation by requesting a free trial today!