Problem context
Fraud attempts in TSL no longer look like they used to
Fraud today
These are no longer emails written in broken Polish asking for an urgent transfer. Today’s fraud is an operation prepared long before the first message is sent.
Before anyone writes to you, they already know: the names of your freight forwarders, the routes you work on, which carriers you regularly use, when your team is under the most time pressure, and what normal communication in your company sounds like.
Where your data can come from
This data was not stolen. It was pulled from your website, LinkedIn, freight exchanges, public registers, and reviews about you. Publicly. Automatically. In seconds.
From that, a message is crafted that reads like any other that inspires trust: it has the right style, the right terminology, it arrives at the right moment, and it comes from the right sender. Almost.
How much can you lose?
A single load that ends up with a fraudulent carrier: direct losses ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands of zlotys. In companies that experience a series of such attempts over several weeks, the value of loads at risk exceeds the level at which the cost of a defensive system pays for itself from a single avoidable incident.
There is also a cost that is harder to measure. Every such situation generates distrust within the organisation. The employee who “should have checked.” The freight forwarder who “could have guessed.” A culture of verification that may start becoming a culture of mutual blame.
Our solution is not another training course on “being careful.” It is process hardening, automation that makes verification faster and more reliable than the operational pressure that forces people to take shortcuts. The final decision always rests with the employee, but this time they have tools that allow them to make it with far less risk.
Qualification
Who this solution makes sense for
Yes, this is for you
- Freight and transport companies in which several people can initiate changes to counterparty contact or payment details.
- Organisations where the pace of work makes it impossible to manually verify every message.
- Management teams that are aware of the problem but are looking for a system, not another training course.
- Companies that have experienced an incident or a near-miss and do not want to wait for the next one.
This solution is not right for you if
- Companies looking for a one-off cybersecurity training course.
- Companies expecting a ready-made product to deploy within a week. The scope is defined at the workshop, not in advance.
- If there is no one in the organisation with a mandate to take part in a diagnostic workshop, it is worth starting with a conversation about what is actually needed.
Vulnerability mechanism
What an AI agent knows about your company before making contact
This is not theory. It is a sequence that can be reproduced within a few hours for any TSL company in Poland.
01
Public registers: KRS, CEIDG, REGON
For management, this is dull data. For an attacker, it is a ready-made kit: the correct company name, tax ID, address, names of board members. Enough to sound like an insider in a conversation.
02
Company website
Names, roles, operational terminology, photos of the fleet and depot. Ready-made material to generate documents that look like your own.
03
An organisational map: who is in operations, who is in finance, who has been there a short time, who deals with foreign partners. A ready-made target list.
04
Employer reviews
Turnover, interdepartmental tensions, a culture of “everything at the last minute.” A ready-made hypothesis: when to apply pressure so that nobody starts verifying.
05
Freight exchanges
Specialisations, corridors, weekly rhythm, the list of regular partners. A ready-made pretext to make contact as a “well-known company with a history of cooperation.”
This is data your company published itself. The problem is that it can be collected automatically and used to build a convincing narrative within minutes, at scale.
Deployment model
From the first conversation to a working system — five stages, none of the necessary ones skipped
We do not sell off-the-shelf tools.
We build solutions tailored to your environment, systems, and the scale of your obligations.
Has this sender contacted us before?
Contact history for a given address: when it appeared for the first time, how many contacts there were, whether orders were fulfilled. A new, unknown address with an urgent offer automatically raises the risk level.
Is the address impersonating someone familiar?
Character-by-character comparison of the address against the counterparty history. One swapped letter, an extra hyphen, a changed domain suffix — differences invisible to the naked eye are detected automatically. This is the most common attack mechanism in Polish TSL.
Is this address in the database of your exchange partners?
Verification against the partner list from Trans.eu and Timocom. If the sender claims to be company X but their address does not appear in its profile, that is a signal to verify.
Does the sender look credible?
Domain age (freshly registered is an immediate warning signal), presence of a company website, reputation in anti-spam databases. Free email accounts in TSL business communication are a separate signal.
Does this message look like previous ones from this sender?
Greeting style, email signature, details in the sign-off, level of formality. A sudden change may indicate account takeover, exactly as in one of the described incidents where a hijacked employee account was used to send fraudulent cargo enquiries. The system has a good chance of detecting this.
Does the message apply pressure or force an exception?
Sudden urgency, account number change, request to communicate outside the exchange, an “emergency situation” narrative, end-of-day pressure. The system recognises these patterns regardless of who the sender is.
The system calculates a risk score and sends the freight forwarder a second message, a few seconds after the original, with an assessment and a specific recommendation: “Verify the company by phone using the number from Trans.eu” or “DO NOT PROCEED, address is on the known fraud list.” No need to log into additional systems.
Green — standard procedure
Yellow — additional verification
Orange — mandatory call to the number in the database
Red — do not proceed without manager approval
20s
Before you make a decision, you already have a full scan
The system analyses the message, checks all signals, and delivers an assessment within seconds — before you have time to reply. Twenty seconds of advantage is enough to ensure that operational pressure does not replace verification.
Business outcomes
What changes in the organisation
Operations
Verification works automatically, with no extra step required from the freight forwarder. Fewer situations where someone “should have checked.” Less tension after incidents.
Finance and risk
A single avoided incident pays for the system many times over. Insurance covers part of the losses after an event; it does not cover the conversation with the client, the loss of the relationship, or management time.
Integration
The system works alongside existing infrastructure: email, TMS, freight exchanges. It requires no process changes or system replacements. The scope is defined around your environment, not the other way around.
Visibility
Management sees what was previously invisible: the number of attempts, types of patterns, trends over time. Fraud in TSL is a repeatable process; the system makes it observable and allows for proactive responses.
Operational culture
Verification stops being the personal responsibility of a specific employee. It becomes part of the process, without a culture of mutual blame after an incident.
Proof and competencies
This is not a made-up scenario. An anonymous case — a Polish freight forwarding company
A Polish freight forwarding company, several dozen vehicles of its own, regular operations on the main European corridors. Over the course of a few weeks the company recorded a series of impersonation attempts targeting regular carriers. In each case the attackers used addresses differing from the originals by a single character: a letter, a hyphen, or a changed domain suffix. The messages included copied email signatures, logos, and registration details of the real companies.
Visually: zero difference.
Case one
The sender used an address differing by one letter from that of a regular carrier. A defensive system would have detected this at step 2, character-by-character comparison against counterparty history, and flagged it as high risk before any response was sent by the freight forwarder.
Case two
An attacker took over an employee’s account at a partner company on the freight exchange platform and sent cargo enquiries from a real, trusted account. The system would have detected the change at step 5, a sudden shift in communication style and email signature relative to the correspondence history with that counterparty.
What protected the company in both cases?
Human vigilance: a freight forwarder who copied the address from the exchange profile rather than from the message.
An employee who called the number from the database rather than the one in the email signature.
- Vigilance works. The problem is that it works inconsistently, under pressure, after dozens of orders a day, on a Friday at 3:45 PM.
- The Defensive AI Agent does more, automatically, on every message, without burdening the freight forwarder, delivering a full situational summary at a glance.
- After the incidents the company built an Excel-based tool to compare email addresses. It worked, but required manual effort on every message. Under pressure that step was skipped exactly when it was needed most.
Reducing decision risk
Most common concerns
We have procedures and we train our staff regularly.
Procedures work until the point where pressure outweighs the time available to apply them. The system does not replace procedures — it reinforces their execution at the moments when that is hardest.
This looks like a major IT project.
We assess available integration points as part of the environment audit. If a native API does not exist, we work with available export interfaces or build an intermediary layer. This is part of the diagnosis before the project, not a surprise during delivery.
I am not sure whether the problem is serious enough for us.
That is exactly what the free consultation is for. We assess the actual scale of exposure in your environment and tell you directly whether a defensive system makes sense for your organisation.
Who will maintain this after deployment?
Maintenance terms are agreed before the project starts. We offer ongoing support with a defined SLA, or a full handover to your technical team with documentation and training. The choice is yours.
We have transport risk insurance.
Insurance covers part of the financial loss after an incident. It does not cover the conversation with the client, the damage to the relationship, the time spent by management, or the reputational consequences. The system prevents incidents before they happen.
Scope and indicative cost
Fraud does not start and end with email
Email is the most common attack vector, but the same mechanism works through exchange messaging systems, SMS, and phone calls. The scope of the system does not follow a feature list; it follows the answer to one question: where in your organisation does pressure most often translate into a decision without verification? That is what we establish at the workshop. Below is an orientation on scope and cost depending on what the system is intended to protect.
SCOPE I
Email channel verification
Companies that want to close the most common attack vector without extensive integration.
- Sender history and trust profile
- Detection of character substitutions invisible to the naked eye
- Domain credibility analysis
- Pressure and urgency patterns in message content
- Scoring with freight forwarder notification
40,000 – 65,000 PLN
net
6 – 8 weeks from the workshop
Most commonly chosen
SCOPE II
Email channel verification with exchange integration
Companies that want to close the most common attack vector and verify against exchange partner databases.
- Everything from Scope I
- Verification against Trans.eu and Timocom partner databases
- Communication style comparison against counterparty history
- Behavioral scoring — sender behaviour patterns
40,000 – 65,000 PLN
net
6 – 8 weeks from the workshop
SCOPE III
Full system
Organisations with multiple contact channels and management that wants to see risk as a measurable indicator.
- Everything from Scope II
- Monitoring of messaging platforms and additional channels
- Advanced AI content analysis
- Transport fraud databases and data breach feeds
- Management dashboard with emerging trend tracking
40,000 – 65,000 PLN
net
6 – 8 weeks from the workshop
Deployment model
How the journey from conversation to working system unfolds
01
Free consultation
We discuss your operational environment, the scale of the organisation, and the points of greatest vulnerability. You leave with a preliminary assessment of whether and where a defensive system makes sense, and an indicative implementation budget.
02
Discovery workshop
The first paid engagement. We map processes, communication channels, existing integrations, and the points where pressure most often leads to a decision without verification. Output: a precise scope specification and a production quote.
03
Production and testing
We build the system tailored to your environment: email, document workflow, TMS, or other operational channels. Testing is carried out against real communication patterns from your organisation.
04
Production deployment and calibration
We deploy, calibrate the system sensitivity, and verify performance on live traffic. We fine-tune to the specific characteristics of the organisation and its working style.
05
Maintenance and development
Fraud patterns evolve. The system requires regular updates and expansion. We provide ongoing support and develop the scope in line with the company’s needs.
What happens after you get in touch
How the process unfolds from first contact
1
Reply within 24 hours
We reply within 24 business hours and arrange a time for the free consultation.
2
Consultation — one hour maximum
During the consultation we talk about your operational environment, not our technology. The first consultation lasts a maximum of one hour.
3
Summary and recommendation
Within a few business days of the consultation we send a summary with a recommendation for the scope of the diagnostic workshop.
4
Your decision
You decide whether you want to enter the paid diagnostic stage. There is no time pressure and no offer with an expiry date.
FAQ
Questions we get
most often
Will the system work with our current TMS?
The system is designed as a layer that works alongside existing infrastructure. Compatibility with specific systems is verified at the diagnostic workshop stage, where we map the environment and define the integration scope.
Does it require access to our operational data?
Yes, to the extent necessary for system calibration. The detailed scope of access and data security principles are agreed before deployment and documented in the contract.
How long does deployment take?
It depends on the scope agreed at the workshop. For a typical scope covering email and basic integrations: between 6 and 12 weeks from the end of the workshop.
We already have our own verification procedures and training.
That is a good foundation. The system reinforces what is already working. The workshop shows where existing processes are most weakly enforced under pressure and where adding an automated support layer is worthwhile.
Can we start with a narrower scope?
Yes. The scope is always defined on the basis of the workshop, not in advance. A targeted deployment is possible: covering email only, document workflow only, or payment data verification only.
Your employees are bombarded with fraud attempts every day. A successful incident is only a matter of time.
Book a free consultation. We will talk about how vulnerability looks in your operational environment and whether a defensive system makes business sense for you. No automatic pitch at the end. No pressure. A concrete assessment by the time we finish.
If the project makes sense, we propose a scope. If it does not, you hear that from us, not after signing a contract.