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”.
