According to the survey from PricewaterhouseCoopers just 28 per cent of people questioned in the public sector said they were likely to suffer a cyber crime attack during the next 12 months, with 14 per cent already having suffered an attack.
The research, which also showed 40 per cent of respondents to believe cyber crime was on the rise, also suggested that senior people within organisations were not placing sufficient emphasis on managing threats from cyber crime fraud. Almost half of boards were said not to review the threat more than once a year.
And despite finding that more than half of public sector bodies had in-house capabilities to detect cyber crime attacks, the majority were said not to have resources to investigate them, instead relying on external forensic technology companies.
Andrew Miller, PwC's head of information security in government said it was "vital" public sector bodies invested in cyber crime monitoring capabilities and that they needed to "align their management structures to take timely actions if a cyber incident occurs".
The survey on global economic crime questioned 184 respondents from the public sector from 36 countries, 27 of which were from the UK..