Sanctions Levied Against Russian Tech Companies

Top Story

Sanctions Levied Against Russian Tech Companies

Nearly three dozen Russian tech companies had sanctions levied against them this week. The U.S. Treasury Department said that the companies are accused of helping Moscow evade the overall sanctions against Russia for its attack on Ukraine. Many of the companies are recognized as shell companies that were set up to evade previous sanctions against the country. Blacklisted companies include microchip manufacturers and supercomputer producers.

Government

Russian Ship ID Systems Go Dark

In an effort to thwart government tracking of their shipping vessels, Russia has ordered it’s ships at sea to disable the automated identification system (AIS) in an effort to prevent international sanctions leveled against the nation for its attack on Ukraine. “Dark activity” is a practice by which ships will turn off the globally recognized ID systems in order to move through international waters undetected. Maritime law requires all ships to have an AIS enabled.

Business

Internal Audit Increasingly Important in Fraud Prevention, New Study Shows

A new study fielded by risk management firm Kroll found that, over the last 2 years, instances of cyber fraud and phishing have increased more than 54% and fraud related to misappropriation of funds has increased more than 40%. In response, organizations are increasingly devoting additional resources to internal audit and fraud prevention. Thirty-six percent of survey respondents said that they have increased resources to their internal audit process, as well as 29% who said they had increased data analytics related to fraud prevention.

Enforcement of Sanctions via IP Address Not Reliable, Compliance Experts Say

Compliance experts say that using internet protocol (IP) addresses are insufficient in enforcing sanctions. Historically, publicly available IP address information has been used to tie transactions to particular nations, but they can be vulnerable to manipulation. Compliance leaders say that these concerns are particularly relevant in areas such as sanctions, where suspicious transaction locations could be flagged for audit. However, due to the rising use of virtual private networks (VPNs), which are capable of spoofing location data, they can not reliably be used for sanction enforcement.