Cybercrime costing Northern Ireland businesses almost £100m each year

That's according to new research from Grant Thornton, which lays bare the true impact on firms here.

That includes so-called "phishing" attacks, asking for personal information and traditional crimes moving online, such as credit card fraud.

And it's almost doubling each year, right across the globe.

Mike Harris, partner of cyber security at Grant Thornton presented the findings in the advisory firm’s Belfast city centre offices today.

“Cybercrime dominates media coverage and Northern Ireland is no different," he said.

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"Data breaches, online fraud, copyright and patent infringements are costing the Northern Ireland economy almost £17m annually in the clean-up process. That doesn’t include the downtime in business operations and systems.

“With computers being used to perpetrate fraud and cyber-attack they also hold the evidence.

“Grant Thornton is offering private and public sector organisations an all-island, one stop shop, from e-discovery to support litigation and investigations to computer forensic services in proving digital frauds such as digitally manipulated or deleted documents.

“Financial crime is increasingly perpetrated by cyber-attack and our clients need assistance to establish the facts, investigate the issue and assess the insurance position.”

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