"Get them before they get you" is the latest mantra behind risk management technology, and Progress is putting that at the heart of its Apama software to instigate faster and better risk management.

Progress, which counts the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Goldman Sachs and Macquarie Bank among its clients, is seeing increasing interest by financial services firms and regulators in the Apama software to fine-tune their risk management exercises.

Apama, a complex event processing platform, is also used by the Financial Services Authority in the UK.

Dan Foody, vice president of Progress Actional said following the high-profile fraud cases such as last year's Societe Generale's internal fraud showed the necessity for real time risk assessment.

"If you look at the failures of risk management in the organisation, obviously there's been a number of them that stem from high level risk management issues.

"They were reassessing risk on a daily or weekly basis - not on a real time basis.

"And in today's world, with the ability to electronically trade and move information you have to assess your risks at the same speed," he said.

Foody believes that having software that monitor companies' risk in real time allows them to assess risk on an up-to-date basis - in turn giving them a fighting chance to prevent fraud before it happens.

"The idea with Apama is to really move towards the ability to not tell you after the fact that you have risk but to stop it before it ever happens," he said.

Foody's comments that companies are increasingly prioritising risk management strategies echo a recent KPMG survey that noted 30 per cent of insurance and finance companies are on the hunt for ways to boost their IT systems to better manage risk.

Around 35 per cent of 315 respondents across the globe said they would happily pump funds into IT systems that improve their risk management policies, noted the survey.