Incidents of cybercrime are on the rise, with a new
study from PwC reporting it as the “only economic crime to have registered an
increase”.
The Global Economic Crime Survey 2016 said that “to some extent”,
economic crime has “gone digital”.
More than a third of respondents said that they had
experienced economic crime in the past two years, with around 50 of those
experiencing losses of $5 million or more.
Worrying, the study found that only 37% of
organizations have a fully operational incident response plan, despite high
levels of concern around cybersecurity amongst senior management.
This suggests that many companies are just not
prepared for the reality of current threats to the security of their
businesses.
Furthermore, despite the high risk and pace of
change associated with cyberfraud, one in five organizations has not carried
out a fraud risk assessment in the last two years.
This “passive approach” to detecting and preventing
economic crime is “a recipe for disaster” said Andrew Gordon, global forensic
services leader at PwC
A passive response to cybercrime, as identified by
PwC, is characterized by organizations treating cybersecurity as an IT, rather
than a management issue — after the report found that 73% of
organizations identify IT staff as first respondents in the event of a
security breach.
PwC advises that “cybercrime is not an IT problem.
If there is one lesson companies should take away from this study, it is this
one”.