CYBERCRIME GROWING WORRY FOR IRISH FIRMS - New research from PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests that over a quarter of Irish organisations were victims of fraud in the last 12 months. The research is based on the responses of 80 Irish firms.
The results of the survey point to cybercrime as a big risk facing Irish organisations. Just over half of Irish respondents said that they were at more risk from cybercrime now than a year ago.
Billy O'Riordan, PwC partner for forensic services, says the main type economic crime is asset misappropriation - covering everything from the improper use of company assets to obtaining goods by deception and abuses of overtime and expense rules.
He says the breakdown between crime carried out within and outside firms is about 50-50.
Cybercrime has been identified by 26% of firms as something they suffered from in the past 12 months. This includes downloading viruses, illegally downloading files for commercial purposes and accessing people's bank accounts.
The figures show a big fall in accounting fraud - 42% of firms suffered from this in 2009, but only 19% this year. Mr O'Riordan says there are two possible explanations for the drop. He says there may be less of an incentive to conceal poor financial figures because of the weak economy, but he also says cutbacks could mean that such fraud is not being detected.
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NEWS IN BRIEF AND CURRENCIES - In a speech to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce this morning, former Taoiseach John Bruton says that a fiscal crisis in Europe was always on the cards about now because of the ageing of the European population.
He says that the European Commission has repeatedly produced reports saying that, with unchanged policies, the debt to GDP ratios of many European states would reach 500% by 2050, simply by virtue of the increased size of the retired population relative to the working age population.
The euro has fallen to levels not seen since last January, trading at $1.3035 and 84.15p sterling.
