Financial services remains the largest victim of cyber crime

Financial services is still the foremost targeted sector by fraudsters.

According to PwC's global economic crime survey, 45 per cent of economic services organisations have suffered fraud prior to now one year, compared to 30 per cent of these in other industries. Also, cyber crime accounted for 38 per cent of financial crime, compared with 16 per cent of crime in other industries.

Of the three,877 businesses surveyed, the financial services sector represented 23 per cent of them (with 878 respondents from 56 countries). The financial services respondents perceived the chance of cyber crime to have increased prior to now 365 days, and it's the second usually reported variety of economic crime.

Andrew Clark, forensic services partner at PwC, said: “The rise in cyber crime isn't so surprising given the sphere holds large volumes of the kind of data cyber criminals have an interest in, and there's a longtime underground economy servicing the purposes of the marketplace for stolen and compromised data.

“Cyber crime puts the financial services sector's customers, brand and reputation at significant risk. Regulators are increasingly viewing cyber crime as a key area of focus, and fiscal institutions are expected to have appropriate systems and controls in place to fight this growing threat.”

Of the financial services businesses surveyed, 46 reported having no 'whistleblowing' mechanism in place, while 22 per cent said what they'd was "effective", and another 22 per cent said it was "only slightly effective".

Clark highlighted that only 18 per cent of monetary services respondents said that they had in place all five measures laid out in the survey:

• Ensure that cyber security is embedded into the business and that the dangers are fully defined and understood, and the impact of fixing technologies available on the market are fully addressed and planned for;

• Ensure there's a fully defined cyber crisis response plan to guard against financial and non-financial loss and to mitigate the reputational risks linked to an incident;

• Ensure that senior management proactively take the lead within the fight against economic crime;

• Conduct more regular fraud risk assessments to spot ever-changing economic crime risks;

• Promote and support the embedding of whistleblowing mechanisms.

“We expected most organisations to have cyber-crime incident response mechanisms in place. It seems that some financial services organisations are complacent in regards to the risks that cyber crime poses, even with serious concerns about potential damage arising from cyber threats,” he said.

“Overall responsibility for managing cyber-crime risks rests with senior management. It truly is therefore essential that senior management understand the possible risks and opportunities the cyber world can present and confirm that there's clear accountability and responsibility inside the organisation for handling these risks and opportunities.”