Protecting freight starts with securing the most routine processes
The logistics industry is under siege. Freight fraud is rising through load board scams, identity spoofing, and social engineering attacks designed to exploit any operational weak point. While the industry has made great strides in hardening TMS platforms, securing load data, and training employees, one everyday workflow remains vulnerable: Appointment scheduling.
Appointment scheduling is a rich source of sensitive operational data. When it’s handled through manual processes and disorganized systems, it’s a prime entry point for fraudsters looking to hijack loads or infiltrate your network. Emails, PDFs, spreadsheets, and public portals all create an open door for fraudulent activity in the scheduling process.
At Qued, we believe appointment scheduling holds more power than meets the eye. But AI, when used correctly, can turn appointment scheduling from a liability into one of your strongest lines of defense.
The Front Door You Forgot to Lock
Hackers don’t always go after your most obvious assets. Sometimes, they’re looking for subtle entry points that expose operational details they can weaponize.
Every week, spreadsheets and emails containing appointment data are shared between carriers, brokers, and warehouse teams. These documents are rich with intelligence: origin and destination points, repetitive lane patterns, contact names, facility availability, and even internal communication habits.
In the wrong hands, that data can be used to:
- Socially engineer a fake pickup
- Redirect a load
- Access deeper layers of your network
Because appointment scheduling has historically been seen as “just a back-office task,” it often operates outside of structured systems, without the kind of access controls or audit logs applied elsewhere.
Ready to secure your scheduling operations?
Book a demo to see how Qued can shield your scheduling process from freight fraud.
AI Sees What Manual Scheduling Misses
The role of AI within Qued’s platform is sophisticated but subtle. Rather than shouting “AI” at every turn, we let it operate behind the scenes, optimizing the efficiency and security of the scheduling process.
What that looks like in practice:
- Structured Communication: No more emailed Excel sheets. Data flows securely and automatically between systems.
- Authentication & Access Control: Only verified users can view or book appointments, with full traceability.
- Anomaly Detection: AI flags suspicious activity or scheduling behavior that deviates from known patterns.
- Centralized Oversight: All scheduling activity is logged, tracked, and visible to key stakeholders.
In other words, AI reduces the surface area for fraud. It turns a fragmented process into a secure, unified system.
From “We Didn’t Know” to “We Secured It”
We recently spoke with a cybersecurity lead at a top logistics firm. He admitted something many in the industry still haven’t considered:“I had no clue how much time and data we were exposing just to make appointments.”That team was handling thousands of loads a week, spreading data through email and sharing credentials across multiple portals. With no centralized oversight, no one knew just how vulnerable they actually were. They didn’t get hacked, but they easily could have. And that realization is what pushed them to modernize their scheduling process.
Securing the Supply Chain from the Inside Out
Cybersecurity is a complex topic in logistics. There are so many players involved in moving freight that a simple firewall is never enough to ensure the protection of a shipment. Cybersecurity today means resilience. You deserve to be confident that your operation can keep running, even under threat. That takes securing every part of the process, even the ones that seem too mundane to make a big difference.
Appointment scheduling directly affects your infrastructure. It dictates how freight flows, who has access, and how information is shared across your network. If that process is fragmented, manual, or poorly secured, you’re leaving the door open to fraud.
With Qued, companies are closing the data security gap, adopting AI scheduling for resilience and peace of mind.
Shared Threat, Shared Responsibility
“Fraud is not one person’s fight,” said Qued CEO, Prasad Gollapalli. “It’s not just up to shippers or carriers alone. Everyone in the logistics ecosystem must come together to ensure stronger security and better outcomes.”
“As cybersecurity threats evolve, so must our assumptions about what needs to be protected. It’s not just your TMS or your billing system. It’s the way you move, and the way you communicate about that movement.” – Tom Curee, Qued President
Qued’s mission is to solve appointment scheduling once and for all, not just to improve efficiency, but to close the scheduling security gap for good.
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