ZAGREB, September 18, 2018 – The Global Economic and Fraud Survey 2018 carried out by PricewaterhousCoopers (PwC) and presented on Tuesday indicates that 53% of Croatian companies fell victim to some form of fraud or economic crime over the past two years, which is 26% more than in 2016. On the global level, 49% of organisations said they had been victims of fraud and economic crime.
According to the report, cybercrime affects one in three organisations (33%), which is an increase of almost 25% over the past two years.
The most prevalent cybercrime in Croatia includes malicious software (35%) and online identity theft (27%). Almost half of the respondents in Croatia (47%) said that cybercrime caused serious disruption and/or cancellation of business processes.
As many as 32% expect that they will experience some form of cyber attack and believe that this type of crime will cause the greatest disruption and negative impact while 23% were not aware of the existence of cyber security programmes to prevent and identify this type of crime in their organisations.
The survey further shows that more than half of the respondents in Croatia (53%) share information with the relevant state institutions about their suspicion of cybercrime or that they had experienced that form of attack.
Half the Croatian respondents said they suffered losses, ranging from 320,000 to 6.4 million kuna due to economic crime, while 9% suffered losses of more than 6.4 million kuna that were not reported in 2016.
Croatian organisations show a positive trend in investing and planning greater amounts in the fight against economic crime and fraud even though this is still below the global level.
Almost every third respondent (30%) had increased investments in the fight against economic crime in the past two years and will continue to increase allocations for that purpose over the next two years.
The head of forensic services in Croatia, Ivana Rapić, underscored that Croatia’s differs to the global results with regard to typical perpetrators of fraud.
PwC conducted the 2018 survey on a sample of 7,200 participants in 123 countries. This is the second time Croatia participated in the survey with 62 respondents.
