According to the Kroll Annual Global Fraud Report this is the first time that cyber theft has surprassed physical theft. I am surprised that it took this long for it to happen.
The report doesn’t say that other forms of fraud are decreasing, but that the theft of intellectual property is just increasing, with 27.3% of companies reporting it compared to 18% in 2009. In comparison only 27.2% of companies reported theft of physical property. It does make me wonder what the true numbers are compared to the reported.
What it comes down to is that it is much easier to steal your intellectual property from the thief’s couch (or office chair) than it is to break into your office and take your laptops or paper clips. Saying that, the report shows that most fraud is done by insiders, people that are already part of your organization.
When companies are losing so much annually to insiders it makes me wonder what type of privileges their organizations utilize. Do they use “least privilege”, or is everyone walking around with admin rights? If your employees have access to data that they shouldn’t because you haven’t instituted a good rights management system then you really need to update your resume because your data is probably already gone.
