Fraud: the use of trickery to obtain an unjustified or illegal advantage
Computer fraud is defined as a crime entailing the use or falsification of data, whether stored, being processed or in transit, for personal or financial gain (Source: Grand dictionnaire terminologique, free translation).
A few statistics
- Recent studies reveal that, since 1999, more than 90% of documents have been produced in digital format.
- One study has revealed that small organizations with fewer than 100 employees account for 42.2% of fraud and theft victims, with 38.2% in the private sector and 23.6% in the public sector. The median sum of fraud-induced loss stands at $150,000. This situation may be attributed to looser control of internal fraud owing to limited resources. (Source: http://www.backcheck.net/statistics.htm)
- Occupational fraud is committed by employees at all organizational levels; 42% of cases are perpetrated by employees, 6% by managers, and 19.3% by owners or executives. This last category generally commits the most substantial fraud, with a higher median loss (approximately $1 million). (Source: http://www.backcheck.net/statistics.htm)
Computer forensics is a complex operation given that the evidence may also be found on peripheral devices. SIRCO’s experts can recover and analyze data from hard disks, CD-ROMs, flash memory devices, cell phones, personal data assistants (PDAs), printers, faxes and a host of other magnetic storage media, even after data has been erased. Importantly, because of the ease of manipulating digital information, if the research and analysis are not performed by a certified investigator, the collected evidence may not meet the criteria required by the courts and may consequently be rejected.
For all these reasons, you can trust SIRCO to help.