Fraud and risk incidents were on the upswing in 2016, according to the Kroll Annual Global Fraud and Risk Report. Respondents were executives around the world, who described these type of incidents as “the new normal”.
Among the report’s findings, there were a number of interesting details, including:
- A rise in the global number of executives who experienced a fraud incident from 75 per cent in 2015 to 82 per cent in 2016.
- Eighty-five per cent of respondents claiming one or more cyber incidents, and more than 67 per cent reporting security incidents in 2016
- Many of these attacks came from inside the organization, whether from people currently or formerly employed at the company during the past year. Sixty per cent of respondents whose companies had experienced fraud incidents said that they were caused by current employees, former employees and third parties. Junior staff were the leading culprits at 39 per cent, senior and middle management followed at 30 per cent, and freelancers or temps came in at 27 per cent.
- Although there was an overall increase in all categories of fraud from 2015 to 2016, according to the report, the biggest rises came from market collusion (15%) and misappropriation of company funds (11%). Theft of physical assets was reported by 29 per cent of respondents and vendor, supplier, or procurement fraud was 26 per cent.
- The news isn’t all bad: 44 per cent of respondents worked at companies where fraud was detected recently through a whistle-blowing program, and 39 per cent had it picked up through an internal audit. In terms of active response to fraud, 76 per cent of those surveyed put employee-focused anti-fraud measures such as staff training or whistle-blowing hotlines into place, and 82 per cent of respondents have adopted anti-fraud measures focusing on information such as IT security or technical countermeasures, and 79% have implemented physical security measures.
Sources: For an overview of the report, visit the press release: http://www.kroll.com/en-us/intelligence-center/press-releases/building-resilience-in-a-volatile-world. To see the whole report, register at http://www.kroll.com/en-us/global-fraud-report.
