UK businesses battling huge rise in cybercrime: report

PanARMENIAN.Net - UK businesses are battling a huge rise in cybercrime capable of bringing down entire companies, says an analysis by accountancy company PwC, according to the Guardian.

In a report that singled out the UK as a hotbed of economic crime, PwC said the threat of cyber offences was now a “board-level issue”, but warned that not enough companies were taking it seriously enough.

PwC also warned of a surge in the number of “silver fraudsters” – older staff who turn against their employer.

Approximately 55% of UK firms have fallen victim to economic crime in the past two years, according to the PwC global economic crime survey, compared with a global rate of 36%.

The fastest-growing area of fraud is cybercrime, which made up just 20% of Britain’s economic crime in 2014 but has since jumped to 44%.

The rise has caught firms napping, according to PwC, pointing to its own survey showing that a third of companies have no plans in place to fend off online fraud.

PwC said the increase in cybercrime was partly down to greater use of cloud-based systems to store information remotely. It also highlighted the “internet of things”, where everyday objects are connected to the internet, potentially opening doors to hackers looking for a chink in a company’s armor.

“Hackers are now more ambitious than ever,” said PwC’s global corporate intelligence expert, Mark Anderson. “Their aim goes beyond targeting financial information to include a company’s ‘crown jewels’ – customer data and intellectual property information, the loss of which can bring down an entire business. The threat of cybercrime is now a board-level risk issue, but not enough UK companies treat it that way.”

But while PwC’s chief concern in the report was the rise of technology in fraud, it also called on companies to be aware of another potential menace – silver fraudsters. The report, according to the Guardian, detailed a “strong shift towards more senior and experienced employees carrying out corporate fraud”.

It said half of the instances of company fraud were committed by staff aged over 40, while the proportion carried out by staff over 50 has trebled from 6% to 18% over the past two years.

Fraud by senior staff often has the greatest impact, PwC said, because they have access to more sensitive information and are subject to less oversight, meaning wrongdoing is harder to detect and prevent.