Protecting Your Brokerage: Cyber & Financial Fraud Best Practices

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and if you run a freight brokerage, this one matters to you more than most. Brokers sit at the center of a two-sided transaction with money moving in both directions — which makes us a juicy target for everything from spoofed shippers to payment diversion schemes. The bad actors have gotten a lot smarter, and the cost of getting burned is bigger than it’s ever been. Here’s what every brokerage should be doing right now.

Verify both sides, not just one.
Most fraud sneaks in through the gap between who you’re paying and who’s paying you. Vet the carrier against DOT and FMCSA. Confirm the bank account actually belongs to the carrier before you release funds. And on the shipper side, run the corporate identity against Secretary of State records and check the domain registration before you ever haul a load. If you’re only vetting carriers, you’re half-protected.

Lookalike domains will burn you.
We’ve seen fake shippers impersonate Fortune 500s with domains like “corporate-llc.com” instead of the real “corporate.com.” If a domain was registered three months ago and claims to belong to a company that’s been around for a hundred years, that’s your answer. Check WHOIS. It takes thirty seconds.

Any change to banking is a new verification event.
Business Email Compromise almost always involves a mid-relationship request to update remit-to info. If someone emails to change their banking or AP contact, don’t reply to the email to confirm it — pick up the phone and call a number you already have on file.

Keep payments inside a controlled network.
Open ACH is where fraud lives. If you can route payments through a closed, verified network where unverified entities simply can’t receive money, do it.

Teach your team to slow down.
Fraudsters work on urgency. Rate-first phone calls, pressure to cover loads immediately, requests to skip normal onboarding — those are the tells. Make it okay for dispatch and AP to pause and verify, even if it costs you a load.

Make verification a habit, not an event.
Set recurring reviews on your customer and carrier base. Keep records. In today’s compliance and liability environment, documented due diligence is one of the best defenses you’ve got.

Fraud prevention is a mindset. Build it into how you operate now — because the day a bad actor shows up is the wrong day to figure out your process.