If a (insert centralized service here) friend tells me about a change of plans, and I know that messages with that contact were successful in the past, then plans indeed changed because it's spoof-proof so long as you didn't make friends with two accounts that end up sharing a name and so long as the sender didn't fall victim to phishing of creds.

If an email from a contact comes in, the from/sender headers can be spoofed without anyone having fallen victim yet, so maybe plans didn't really change.

Yes there are social aspects but there is also this plainly technical aspect.

All you've done is moved the problem from your organization to theirs.

Phishing can still pwn you.

True, but making credential theft a prerequisite is helpful.

Yes, the problem is people on the paying side not realizing that payment change requests are fraudulent. So a better process removes people on the paying side routinely changing payment information. Require that payees sign into a separate service and they change the payment information themselves.

Again I think that just slapping a new service in there doesn't address the fundamental problem which is that the university did not conduct sufficient verification of payment details before sending out 12 million dollars.

All it would have taken is a phone call to the company's accounting department confirming the change.

"Verification of changes to banking details as a service" is not the answer. It's a Band-Aid solution.

And my perspective is that as long as you have a process where administrative staff are making the changes, they will cut corners. For them, these transfers are routine. They do dozens every month. You need a process which removes them from the loop.