Cyber crime and the manipulation of fake invoices are costing the UK construction industry more than £1.8bn every year.
Cyber crime is one of the biggest-growing concerns for the construction industry, especially as it moves into embracing BIM and more work is going online, as was reported and explored in depth by CM in its recent feature BIM and Cyber Security: Defending the Chain.
The research carried out by by Tungsten Network found that from construction companies surveyed, 60% have received a fraudulent or suspicious invoice in the last year – this is significantly more than any other sector and the national average of 47%.
Tactics have included: viruses embedded in attachments; unknown invoices attached to an email or sent by post; false changes to bank details and sending duplicate invoices.
The research also revealed that worryingly, not every company is aware of the high stakes – 11% of construction businesses would take no action if they received a suspicious invoice and 6% wouldn’t know what to do.
Only around half (54%) would contact the police or a reporting service like Action Fraud, showing that there is still an education job to do in terms of knowing how to handle cyber-crime.
