“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest” these words spoken by Benjamin Franklin couple of centuries ago still holds true. Today these very knowledge assets are in grave danger from the fraudsters who are lurking to steal it and make money out of it. As 21st century technology is making in-roads in our everyday lives everything is going digital, out intellectual property demands somewhat same financial valuation as our physical assets. This has given rise to hi-tech cyber criminal to will go to any length to steal intellectual property, counterfeiting, identity theft etc. This has caused loss in billions of dollars to the businesses all over the world. Even India is not untouched by these fraudsters who are waiting for our one wrong move to make the attempt.
A survey done by KPMG India has shown some startling results; fraudsters are increasingly targeting organizations’ knowledge like data, code, designs, product prototype, financial details etc rather than the physical assets. This is because the increased penetration of internet and availability of plenty of tools to break in secure environment has resulted in the sudden spur of this incident. Stealing financial data to transfer money from bank is easier than physically stealing money and chances are slim that the culprit will ever get caught. The survey outlined that some of the worst affected sectors include Banking, Services, Insurance, Financial, Entertainment and Real estate etc. The risk of online fraud has increased in recent past said the study, though compared to global peers the fraud in India is still evolving. Though companies are doing their bit of due diligence yet it require more systematic approach to keep everything under control.
For Indian companies it has become important to keep some 3-4% of their overall expenditure as fraud-related expense since the number such incidences are on the rise. It is not only the outsiders who are responsible for this scandalous act of betrayal but sometimes the insider or senior management are also involved in it. Nigerian Scam is well-known to everyone yet in India thousands of them fall prey to it every year. Recently India saw some high-profile fraud in respected institution like Satyam, CitiBank, Commonwealth Games, Reebok and Bharti-walmart the latest one.
Many incidences could have be averted, as the survey revealed, 40% of the respondent said their company did not have any specific guidelines and 53% said they did not have a policy to mitigate the risk. If only proper guidelines and active policy were in place these incidences could have been reduced further. The survey states that having a whistleblower mechanism, conducting regular internal audits, and precise data analytics can greatly help to detect fraud at the earliest.
It is said that better late than never, continuous training and awareness along with periodic testing internal process and regular audits can effectively tackle this problem of fraud.
