HERE'S something that should make you sit up and take notice: Organised gangs are taking an overwhelming interest in your company and its finances to try to steal as much money as it can, with or without your notice, and to a large extent with help from someone inside your organisation.

And if that's not shocking enough, as high as 85 per cent of compromised records in most large organisations are now being attributed to organised criminal groups collaborating across continents.

That's the verdict from a recent study by the US Secret Service (USSS) and telecom giant Verizon Corp.

Driven largely by organised groups, the majority of breaches and almost all data stolen (98 per cent) in 2009 was the work of criminals outside the victim organisation.

Nearly all data was breached from servers and applications. Surprisingly, organisations remain sluggish in detecting and responding to incidents.

Most breaches are discovered by external parties and only then after a considerable amount of time.

The USSS says it investigated five countries - including Singapore - in which a breach was suspected but not confirmed. The other four were Sweden, Bulgaria, Egypt, and Italy.

However, the USSS confirms that organised criminal groups from East Asia are also getting into the game now.

'More breaches originate from East Europe than any other region,' the 2010 Data Breach Investigation Report note.