Our Fraud Prevention Framework describes the architectural model — four layers from communication defense through detection and response. This guide covers the operational side: how those layers actually get coordinated day-to-day across departments that don't normally work together.
Cross-Department Coordination
Fraud attempts typically cross departmental boundaries — a BEC email lands with an individual employee, but a fraudulent wire transfer requires finance to act, and a compromised account requires IT/security to remediate. Without a defined escalation path connecting these teams, detection at the communication layer doesn't translate into a stopped transaction.
Payment Hold Protocols
A specific, practical control: any payment or banking-detail change request that triggers a security flag should have a defined hold protocol — the transaction is paused pending out-of-band verification (a phone call to a known-good number, not one provided in the suspicious email) before it proceeds. This single control closes the gap between "detected" and "prevented."
Vendor Risk Management
Since a meaningful share of fraud originates through compromised vendor accounts rather than direct attacks, an operational fraud prevention program needs a vendor risk process: a way to flag and verify unexpected changes in vendor communication or banking details, independent of whether the individual email itself trips any technical detection.
Reporting Up
Fraud attempts blocked at the communication layer are a leading indicator worth reporting to leadership, not just an IT metric — they demonstrate the financial exposure the organization avoided and justify continued investment in the earlier layers of defense described in the Fraud Prevention Framework.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is this different from the Fraud Prevention Framework page?
The Framework describes the four-layer architecture. This guide is the operational playbook for running that architecture day-to-day — who does what, and in what order, when a flag is raised.
What's the single highest-leverage operational control?
A mandatory out-of-band verification step for any payment or banking-detail change that's flagged — it directly closes the gap between detecting a fraud attempt and actually stopping the transaction.