PwC has recently reported that almost a half of all public sector organisations in 36 countries have suffered from economic crime, especially employee and supplier fraud as well as cyber criminal activity.

In more detail, 46 per cent reported that they experienced being crime targets, which is a vast growth from 2009's 37 per cent.

In addition, 14 per cent said that throughout last year they were suffering from crime coming from the World Wide Web with an additional 28 per cent thinking that they might be next in line.

Another 40 per cent said they thought that cyber crime is growing rapidly and has become a new path criminals could take to damage businesses.

At the moment half of the businesses revealed that they did not pay enough attention to this activity, admitting senior officials were not reviewing the threats often enough - only once a year.

Andrew Miller, PwC's head of information security in the government, was quoted as saying:

"Damage to an organisation's reputation and the potential loss of data are high on the public sector's agenda when it comes to the impact of cyber attacks.

"Therefore, it is vital that organisations continue to ensure they are investing in cyber crime monitoring capabilities and align their management structures to take timely actions if a cyber incident occurs."

In addition, two thirds of all crimes were committed by public sector employees themselves and a third was supplier fraud.