Cybercrime is no longer a niche technology risk. It is a financial risk that affects cashflow, operational continuity, supplier relationships and board-level accountability.
Today’s threats are also changing shape. Artificial intelligence (AI) is making scams faster to produce, harder to detect and easier to scale. Meanwhile, payment fraud continues to shift away from brute-force attacks and toward targeted manipulation of people, processes and vendor workflows.
This Cybersecurity Guide is designed to help CFOs understand what is changing, what is staying the same and what practical steps finance leaders can take to reduce risk across payments, suppliers and compliance.
Jon Soldan
CEO, Eftsure
Download the 2026 Cybersecurity Guide for CFOs
The illusion of control
Most finance teams have strong controls on paper. Approval workflows, segregation of duties and audit trails are all critical. But many organisations still operate with a false sense of security because modern fraud does not always break the rules, it works around them.
How attackers work around finance controls
Attackers are increasingly exploiting:
- Gaps between finance and IT ownership
- Vendor onboarding weaknesses
- Outdated assumptions about email trust
- Approval processes that rely on human judgement under pressure
Why traditional controls are no longer enough
Finance controls are often built for internal error, not external manipulation.
For example:
- A two-person approval process does not prevent fraud if both approvers are deceived
- A verified supplier record is not safe if it can be changed without independent verification
- A callback process is unreliable if attackers can intercept or spoof phone numbers
What CFOs should take away
The goal is not more controls. The goal is controls that still work under modern conditions.
That means:
- Validating supplier changes independently
- Testing payment processes like an attacker would
- Building resilience into workflows, not just policy documents
The threat landscape
Cybercrime is now a global, professionalised industry. Many attacks are no longer opportunistic. They are researched, targeted and designed to exploit predictable finance behaviours.
The most common and damaging threats for CFOs typically fall into three overlapping categories:
- Payment fraud and vendor impersonation
- Business email compromise (BEC)
- Ransomware and operational disruption
Why finance teams are a prime target
Finance teams sit at the intersection of:
- Money movement
- Supplier relationships
- Urgent approvals
- Sensitive identity and banking information
This makes them ideal targets for attackers who want a high payout with minimal technical effort.
What has changed in 2026
Several trends are accelerating risk:
- AI tools make impersonation easier and faster
- Deepfake voice scams are more accessible
- Dark web data provides attackers with detailed organisational context
- Fraud groups increasingly specialise (one group steals data, another executes the scam)
What CFOs should do now
The CFO role in cyber resilience is shifting toward proactive oversight of:
- Payment controls and exceptions
- Supplier verification processes
- Internal accountability for fraud prevention
- Incident response planning for finance-specific threats
The chaos of cross-border compliance
For organisations operating across borders, compliance is no longer just a legal concern. It is a fraud and payment risk issue.
Different jurisdictions enforce different rules for:
- Sanctions screening
- Anti-money laundering (AML)
- Supplier due diligence
- Privacy and data retention
- Payment authorisation and liability
This creates a compliance environment that is constantly moving and often inconsistent.
The real challenge for CFOs
The complexity is not only in understanding each rule. It is in ensuring controls remain effective when:
- Suppliers operate internationally
- Payments are processed across regions
- Finance teams share supplier data across systems
- Regulatory updates occur mid-contract or mid-year
Where organisations often go wrong
Many teams respond to compliance complexity by adding manual steps, spreadsheets or additional sign-offs. These approaches can:
- Slow down payment cycles
- Create friction for vendors
- Increase internal workload
- Introduce new error points
- Fail to stop sophisticated fraud
What good looks like
Strong cross-border control environments are built on:
- Consistent verification standards across regions
- Audit-ready documentation
- Workflows that reduce reliance on human judgement under time pressure
- Independent confirmation of supplier changes
Cross-sector risk mitigation
Governments, regulators and financial institutions are increasingly treating payment fraud as a shared problem rather than an isolated business failure.
Across regions, there is growing momentum around:
- Confirmation-style account verification
- Stronger expectations for supplier due diligence
- Improved payment data standards
- Shared responsibility models for fraud prevention
Why this matters for CFOs
Even when frameworks exist, they are not universal. And they do not remove the need for internal controls.
CFOs should assume:
- Liability models will continue to evolve
- Expectations around reasonable steps will increase
- Insurers, auditors and regulators will ask harder questions after incidents
The CFO opportunity
Finance leaders can reduce exposure by building payment and supplier controls that are:
- Consistent
- Measurable
- Testable
- Defensible under audit and investigation
How to protect your payments
The most effective fraud prevention strategies in 2026 focus on protecting the moments where money moves, supplier details change or approvals are made under pressure.
This section outlines practical steps CFOs can apply to strengthen payment integrity without slowing the business.
1. Treat supplier changes as high-risk events
One of the most common fraud patterns involves legitimate suppliers, but changed banking details.
CFOs should ensure:
- All bank detail changes are verified independently
- Verification is completed outside of email threads
- Staff know that urgency is a red flag, not a reason to rush
2. Strengthen controls around email-based approvals
Email is still a major control weakness because it is easy to impersonate.
Practical steps include:
- Removing email as a source of truth for supplier changes
- Requiring verification for any invoice that includes new or amended payment details
- Training finance teams on modern impersonation techniques
3. Build resilience against deepfake and impersonation scams
Deepfake voice and AI-written emails increase the likelihood that staff will trust an instruction that feels legitimate.
CFOs can reduce risk by:
- Implementing verification procedures that do not rely on recognition of voice or writing style
- Standardising escalation paths for unusual requests
- Ensuring executives follow the same rules as everyone else
4. Reduce reliance on manual checks
Manual processes fail under scale, staff turnover and time pressure.
This does not mean removing human oversight. It means designing systems that:
- Prevent unauthorised supplier changes
- Record verification evidence automatically
- Reduce exceptions and workarounds
5. Test your controls like an attacker would
Most organisations assume controls work because they exist.
A stronger approach is to:
- Run payment fraud simulations
- Audit supplier change processes
- Review exception patterns (who bypasses controls, and why)
- Stress-test approvals under time pressure
6. Align finance, procurement and IT
Fraud risk sits across multiple functions.
Effective organisations clarify:
- Who owns supplier verification standards
- Who owns payment process integrity
- Who owns incident response for finance-led fraud events
This alignment reduces the gaps attackers typically exploit.
7. Make fraud prevention measurable
CFOs should be able to report on fraud prevention maturity with real metrics, such as:
- Number of supplier bank detail change requests per month
- Percentage independently verified
- Number of exceptions or bypasses
- Average time to verify supplier changes
- Fraud attempts detected versus missed
Download the 2026 Cybersecurity Guide for CFOs
Conclusion
In 2026, cybercrime is not just a security issue. It is a finance leadership issue.
CFOs are uniquely positioned to reduce fraud exposure by strengthening the controls that govern supplier onboarding, invoice handling, payment approvals and bank detail verification.
The organisations that perform best are those that:
- Treat payment integrity as a strategic priority
- Test controls regularly
- Reduce reliance on manual workarounds
- Align finance, procurement and IT
- Build defensible verification standards
Download the 2026 Cybersecurity Guide for CFOs
About Eftsure
Eftsure helps organisations prevent payment fraud by independently verifying supplier details and protecting finance teams from invoice redirection scams and vendor impersonation.
