Cybercrime has overtaken theft as the biggest fraud risk for government agencies, a survey has found.
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PricewaterhouseCoopers' latest Fight fraud in the public sector report says the trend towards criminal hacking is global, but is happening more quickly in Australia than elsewhere.
Australian organisations said 65 per cent of the economic crime they had experienced in the past two years could be described as cybercrime, compared with a worldwide incidence of 28 per cent.
Hacking also topped government agencies' list of threats they believed would affect them in future, followed by theft, procurement fraud, bribery and corruption, and IP infringement.
PwC forensic services partner Cassandra Michie said the move to automate and deliver government services digitally was driving the trend.
The report said governments held "a trove of sensitive data that is by nature more exposed to public access".
"The existence of this data presents an opportunity for cybercriminals to obtain access to information and use it for more traditional identity theft and fraud purposes," it said.
The report also noted a greater incidence of crime perpetrated by insiders than in previous years.
Ms Miche said one way corrupt public servants aided cybercrime was by sharing access to confidential information they had downloaded improperly.
"Also, they could be colluding with others [outside the agency] to provide them with their access to data. We've seen the [Australian] Crime Commission comment on that happening," she said.
However, the dominant threat remained from external hackers.
"They're trying to extract data of worth; for example, to perpetrate identify fraud, steal government secrets, corrupt a process such as an election, or even for nuisance value as a form of protest – hacktivists," Ms Miche said.
The report also outlined the "CV of a typical fraudster" in the public service.
He (fraudsters are much more likely to be men, even though most public servants are women) was in junior or middle management, aged 41 to 50, university-educated and had been in his workplace for three to five years.
Ms Miche suggested men could be over-represented because they were more likely to be in roles that enabled them to perpetrate the fraud.
Men also tended to have a greater appetite for risk than women, she said.
"Anecdotally ... in our professional experience, women play it smaller and tend to get away with it for a longer period of time without being detected."
