Manufacturing & Engineering

In the latest report, 89% of respondents in the manufacturing industry experienced at least one incident of fraud in the previous 12 months, and 91% of respondents reported at least one cyber incident during the same period².

One of the main factors determining the industry’s fate is the growth of manufacturing in emerging markets (often geographically removed from a company’s main operation) which affords localised operations the opportunity to avoid the detection of global management oversight.

The most common types of fraud/cyber-attack affecting this particular industry are related to data loss (the most common targets being customer records, IP, trade secrets, R&D and employee records) or theft of IP by way of data breach, or through piracy or counterfeiting. Unusually, the most likely perpetrator of a cyber incident in the manufacturing industry is an agent or intermediary.

We have experience in advising clients in this sector on identifying and reducing their risks to fraud through assisting on investigations and in litigation.

²Ibid page 77