North Korean Remote IT Worker Fraud: Managing Insider Threat, Sanctions and Employment Risk
What’s new: Recent U.S. DOJ, FBI and Treasury actions highlight the evolution of North Korea-affiliated worker fraud schemes, which involve the use of stolen identities, fabricated credentials and domestic facilitators to secure remote IT positions at companies (both in the U.S. and globally) and funnel wages back to sanctioned governments. Why it matters: Companies that inadvertently hire these operatives face costly data breaches, cybersecurity threats and potential criminal liability as the number of fraudulent employment applications only continues to rise. What to do next: Organizations should consider reviewing and strengthening their hiring, monitoring, insider threat and incident response protocols to mitigate financial, reputational and legal exposure as enforcement activity ramps up. __________ In recent years, a sophisticated fraud scheme has emerged that poses a serious and growing threat to companies worldwide: the infiltration of corporate workforces by fraudulent rem...