I’m repurposing the initialism ‘TL: DR’ to mean ‘Too Long: Did Read’. I have been writing industry reports since 2015 and reading them far longer, which gives me a wealth of experience to assess the content of industry reports so you don’t have to.

I’m kicking off this series with the PwC’s Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey 2022. I found this report while reading Lori MacVittie’s monthly newsletter, The Tech Menagerie. As my friends in Boston would say, Lori is ‘wicked smaht’ and someone you should follow. Note: none of my friends actually talk like that unless they’re making fun of their own home town.

Overall impression – This not a cybersecurity report, it’s a report for CFOs, CMOs, and other executives looking for information about fraud in the industry. It’s worth reading for a security professional because it reflects the concerns those executives are worried about. Survey data is one of my least favorite ways to build a report, but PwC is correct in framing this as opinions, rather than facts.

My key takeaway from the report is the rising concern about hackers and cybercrime among executives across all industries. My key complaint is the lack of analysis in the report. ‘Here’s the data’ is different from ‘Here’s what the data means.’ I’d give this report a solid B, which could have been an A with additional analysis.

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