This year, 15 per cent of survey respondents cited organised crime as a source of incidents, up from 12 per cent last year. By region, theft by organised criminals was particularly high in Malaysia (35 per cent), India (22 per cent) and Brazil (18 per cent).

Globally, 59 per cent of the respondents say their organisations' executives are worried about government surveillance. Concerns are markedly higher in China (93 per cent), India (83 per cent) and Brazil (77 per cent).

Over 9,700 respondents said the number of cyber incidents detected increased at a compound annual rate of 66 per cent since 2009. As the frequency of cyber incidents have risen so too has the reported costs of managing and mitigating them. The survey cited a recent study by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies estimating annual cost of cybercrime to the global economy in the range of USS375 billion and $575 billion.

"Despite greater awareness of cyber security incidents, global information security budgets actually decreased 4 per cent compared with 2013," said Vincent Loy, Cyber Risk Leader, at PwC Singapore. "We know that it can cost much more to remediate cyber incidents than prevent them, so it seems counterintuitive that organisations would choose to invest less overall," he said.