With mobility and social media becoming an integral part of today?s business environment, companies are exploring different avenues to incorporate these new trends into the professional space without compromising on security. As new technology opens access to better ways of doing business, it also leaves organisations vulnerable ? not just to data breaches, but also the losses that accompany them.
Businesses have traditionally maintained a high degree of control on the way information is accessed and modified. Until now, employees were given corporate-owned devices that limited access to only authorised, often high-level individuals. But the millennial workforce wants more: Today?s generation of employees are demanding tablets; they prefer their own, often more advanced and faster smartphones compared to the staid office-issued handset, and can?t stay away from social networking for long.
An IDC report indicates that by the year end, a billion mobile devices will access the internet. Indian businesses are increasingly seeing the benefits of allowing users to bring their own smartphones and tablets to work. Similarly, social media?s popularity as a consumer tool is now being leveraged as a business enabler. Gartner reports that by 2014, social networking services will replace email as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20% of business users.
?Today?s new technology-savvy generation, is used to having control of their work tools and how they can be most productive. This evolving workforce wants to use their smartphones, tablets or laptops of choice to do company work. At Cisco, while most employees use both, a computer and a smartphone to access company IT services, above 20% use more than two devices. And the diversity of those devices is growing exponentially,? says Mahesh Gupta, vice-president, borderless networks, Cisco, India and Saarc.
Most organisations are already using cloud computing to deliver anytime-anywhere access to information and applications. However, experts feel, a breach of information can be disastrous as critical information assets are dispersed across the cloud, smart devices and social media, bringing new challenges in security. A proprietary design document is a differentiator only until the competition does not have it. Customer information, when leaked, can affect the brand reputation. And one misdirected email, sent from a mobile device to a wrong individual, can expose businesses to risks that they cannot afford in the current business environment.
?These new technologies can increase the insider threat to data, with inadvertent mistakes putting critical information at risk, and malicious employees stealing data for personal gain, possibly at a future job,? says Shantanu Ghosh, VP and MD, India product operations, Symantec.
A new report by the security firm indicates that three strategic IT trends that are enabling business ? cloud, mobile and social computing ? are also making security more difficult for Indian companies. According to the report, 62% of Indian businesses find that private cloud computing and public software-as-a-service make security more difficult. Similarly, 58% face a similar challenge with social media and 53% with mobile computing.
In addition, hacking, targeted attacks and espionage are very real threats ? the most prominent example being the Stuxnet worm ? the first computer virus to affect the real-world, which affected industries globally. India had the third highest Stuxnet infections globally.
The security firm\’s recent report also indicated that 72% of Indian businesses experienced cyber security attacks in the past 12 months and a whopping 92% of them faced losses on account of these attacks. These losses translated into actual costs in most cases ? with an average revenue loss of R41 lakh in the last financial year.
Industry experts feel that in India, cyber security risks are a bigger business risk than terrorism and natural disasters. They are putting money and people to ensure that they can take advantage of technology without compromising on security. One in two businesses are planning changes to security this year. Over half are increasing their budgets for private and public cloud security initiatives. Around 60% are also looking at manpower capacity growth for private and public cloud security. With over 850 million mobile subscribers in India, security and management of mobile devices ? particularly tablets ? are the focus area today.
?Like any other business decision, enabling an ?any device? policy has its risks and rewards, ranging from data security to productivity. Enabling ?bring your own device? requires a cross-domain effort from desktop, security, network infrastructure, and communications departments as this blurs the traditional corporate network perimeter and the enterprise becomes a borderless environment,? says Gupta. However, experts feel as Indian organisations realise the importance of a holistic strategy in minimising the business impact of cyber security issues, they are better positioned to protect themselves against revenue, data and brand losses.