In the UK, 55% of organisations reported that they experienced crim in the last two years - since 2014 - an increase of 11 percentage points since 2014, and significantly outstripping the level in countries such as the US (38%) and China (28%).

PwC’s  Global Economic Crime Survey 2016 found that 60% of UK economic crime was committed by external perpetrators, up from 56% in 2014.

While there was a decline in the number of organisations reporting economic crime perpetrated by employees (31%), there was a large increase in frauds committed by senior management which more than doubled from 7% to 18%.

Andrew Gordon, PwC’s global and UK forensics leader, said: ‘While the prevalence of traditional fraud, such as asset misappropriation, has fallen since 2014, there has been a huge rise in organisations reporting cybercrime. Technology is driving almost every other area of economic crime as well.’

Some 44% of UK organisations that had experienced economic crime in the last 24 months were affected by cyber incidents, a jump of 20 percentage points from 2014 - and substantially higher than the global response of 32%.

Just over half (51%), of UK organisations say they expect to be the victim of cybercrime in the next two years. However, only 12% of respondents believe that law enforcement authorities have the necessary skills and resources to investigate it. Almost a third of UK entities have no cyber response plan in place.

UK respondents say the greatest concern about a cyber-attack is the potential disruption to services – 31% say it would have a medium-to high impact. Surprisingly, almost half say that cybercrime would have no impact on their reputation and almost 60% are not concerned about the potential for theft of intellectual property.

ACCA and the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) have also published research Cybersecurity – Fighting Crime’s Enfant Terrible on cyber threats worldwide, and are calling for accountants to encourage businesses to adopt a strategic approach to tackling the issues.

Faye Chua, ACCA’s head of business insights, said: ‘Exploitation of the myriad weaknesses within cybersecurity is now being perpetrated by a rogues gallery of hostile nation states, digitally enabled terrorists, conniving competitors, organised crime syndicates, hacktivists and even the odd disgruntled employee.

‘From health records to credit cards, individual pieces of confidential data are fetching up to $45 per unit on the black market. With databases holding millions of records now commonplace the consequences of a breach have become too serious to ignore.’

ACCA and IMA recommend accountants develop an approach which includes:

• creating reasonable estimates of financial impact that different types of cybersecurity breaches will cause, so that a business can be realistic about its ability to respond to an attack and/or recover from it; defining risk management strategy;
• helping businesses to establish priorities for their most valuable digital resources, in order to implement a ‘layered’ approach to cybersecurity; and
• closely following the work of government and various regulators, in order to have clear, up-to-date information on adequate legislation and on requirements for adequate disclosure and prompt investigation of cybersecurity breaches.

Chua said: ‘Putting a “plan for failure” in place might feel like an admission of weakness, but it is the best way to accelerate the process of repair after an incident.

‘Professional accountants possess both industry knowledge and a strategic understanding of the overarching strategy of the organisation. In addition, they boast a well-deserved reputation for being fiercely analytical of potential risks to the safety of their clients and employers.’

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