Washington, May 24: An Indian-origin computer scientist at Southern Utah University in Cedar City recommends educating business managers about computer fraud so as to reduce its incidences.

Shalini Kesar says that managers should be apprised of security issues, and that junior staff should have a hint that their boss knows what exactly digital fraud is.

In a report published in the International Journal of Business Information Systems from Inderscience Publishers, she described digital fraud as one of the growing problems for businesses these days.

She also wrote that a lack of communication at the wider organizational level was often associated with computer fraud.

"Computer fraud can result from incompetence, ignorance, negligence in the use of Information Technology or deliberate misappropriation by individuals," said Kesar.

She said that such factors lead to the destruction the main information systems as well as backup systems, which in turn results in the loss of a huge amount of money.

Kesar said that very few cases of computer fraud had been reported to date, and that employees posed one of the greatest threats because they were in a better position than "outsiders" to engage in computer fraud.

She, however, insisted that opportunistic computer fraud could be minimized by educating managers about how organizational structure could affect the effectiveness of security measures.

"Lack of awareness of social and technical issues among managers largely manifest themselves in a failure to implement even the most basic safeguards and controls," she said.

"Concomitantly, if management ignores wider organizational structural issues then this too increases the likelihood of a potential offender committing computer fraud," she added. (ANI)