-
Corporate Finance and Deal Advisory
We offer a dedicated team of experienced individuals with a focus on successfully executing transactions for corporates and financial institutions. We offer an integrated approach, with our corporate finance specialists working seamlessly with tax and other specialists to ensure that every angle is covered.
-
Digital Risk
Grant Thornton offers solutions to the digital risk issues you are sure to face. Our skilled and experienced security team can helping by advising and consulting, giving you peace of mind, clear value for money and an enhanced ability to react to attacks.
-
Technology Consulting
Motivating and assisting our clients to pursue, maintain and secure the benefits of digital solutions is at the core of our Digital Transformation teams' agenda and goals. We work with business leaders to deliver efficient digital strategies and operating models that provide new or enhanced capabilities.
-
Economic Advisory
Our all-island Economics Advisory team combines expertise in economics and business with a wealth of experience across the public and private sectors.
-
Forensic Accounting
We have a different way of doing business by delivering real insight through a combination of technical rigour, commercial experience and intuitive judgment. We take pride in delivering responsive and tailored solutions to all our clients, capitalising on the wealth of experience housed within our Belfast and wider Forensics team
-
People and Change Consulting
The Grant Thornton People & Change Consulting practice works with clients on these issues as well as on all aspects of how they attract, retain, engage develop, deploy and lead their people.
-
Restructuring
We work with a wide variety of clients and stakeholders such as high street banks, private equity funds, directors, government agencies and creditors to implement solutions which provide the best possible outcomes.
-
Corporate and International Tax
Northern Ireland businesses face further challenges as they operate in the only part of the UK that has a land border with a country offering a lower tax rate.
-
Employer Solutions
Our team specialises in remuneration and incentive planning and works closely with employers, shareholders and employees to ensure that business strategies are aligned and goals achieved in the most tax efficient, cost-effective manner.
-
Entrepreneur and Private Client Taxes
Our team of experienced advisors are on hand to guide you through any decision or transaction ranging from the establishment of new business ventures, to realising value on exit, to succession planning and providing for loved ones.
-
Global Mobility Services
Grant Thornton offer a different approach to managing global mobility. We have brought together specialists from our tax, global payroll, people and change and financial accounting teams across Ireland and Northern Ireland, while drawing on the knowledge and insights of our global network of over 143 offices of mobility professionals to provide you with a holistic approach to managing global mobility.
-
Outsourced Payroll
Our outsourced service provides valued service to over 150 separate PAYE schemes. These ranging from 1 to 1000 employees, working for micro, SME and global employers. The service is supported by the integrated network of tax and global mobility teams and the wider Grant Thornton network delivering a seamless service. Experienced staff deliver a personal service built around your business needs.
-
Tax Disputes and Investigations
Our Tax Disputes and Investigation team is made up of tax experts and former HMRC investigators who have years of experience in dealing with a variety of tax investigations. Our expertise and insight can guide you through all interactions, keeping your cost at a minimum while allowing you to continue with the day to day running of your business.
-
VAT and Indirect Taxes
At Grant Thornton (NI) LLP, our team helps Northern Ireland businesses manage their UK and global indirect tax risks which, as transactional taxes, can quickly become big liabilities.
Subscribe to our mailing list
Update your subscriptions for Grant Thornton publications and events.
What is a bot?
If you look up the definition in the Oxford dictionary, you would learn that it is “a computer program that runs automated tasks over the internet”. That doesn’t sound so bad on its own, and it isn’t – a program is a tool, a little different in that regard to, say, a hammer. In the right hands, hammers can be used to build all kinds of things, from the mundane to the spectacular, and on the other hand, they can be used to break those things into pieces.
Bots are very much the same; good bots, for instance, are used to optimise webpages for search engines, collect and aggregate information, and perform complex analyses of the vast volumes of data that the internet holds. But unfortunately, not all bots are good.
What if they’re bad though?
Bad bots are far more malicious in their intent and their impact.
They can be used for ‘card cracking’, once a fraudster has part of a set of card details, a bot can be tasked to scour the internet in search of the missing information needed to enable that fraudster to make use of the card or even sell on the full set of details. Some bots can take that a step further and use the information they find to guess the missing details where they are not readily available.
Increasingly common ‘account takeover’ attacks involve giving a bot a set of already leaked credentials (a username and password) and having it test those credentials on many other services. These attacks rely on us using the same username/password combinations for several logins – and they work because so many of us do.
How often are these bots used?
They are increasingly available to fraudsters as pre-packaged ready-to-go software. According to a recent Imperva Report, bad bots accounted for nearly 28% of all internet traffic globally in 2021; a proportion that has increased year-on-year since at least 2019.
What can I do?
So what can you do to protect yourself? Whether you’re looking at personal or business security, you can take two basic steps. Firstly, look for services with a 2 Factor Authentication login (these will involve getting a temporary code to enter alongside your username and password), these are increasingly common for all online services but should be considered essential when it comes to banking and finance in particular.
Secondly, use different strong passwords for your various online logins and a password manager to keep track of them – many modern antivirus programs offer a password manager service, usually as a paid-for extra, but as a free alternative, check your browser to see if it can securely store passwords. Between those two steps, you should minimise the risk of your details being stolen by bad bots. The inconvenience of any comprised account, even just one, could be huge – it’s essential to make every effort to be secure.