Indian firms are looking to increase their spending on measures to tackle cyberattacks, which are expected to become more complex with a thrust on rapid digitisation.
According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), over 6.74 lakh cyber security incidents were reported in the country in the first six months of this year.
Over 82% of business executives in India foresee an increase in cyber security budget in 2023, according to the PwC’s latest annual Global Digital Trust Insights . The survey says 65% of the business executives feel cyber criminals will significantly affect their organisation in 2023 compared with 2022.
In India, cloud-based pathways (59%) and the internet of things (58%) are major concerns, followed by mobile devices and software supply chains (54%). Globally, mobile devices are considered most unsecure (41%).
“The digitisation of business demands that corporates and boards invest in becoming more cyber resilient. This needs to be across the spectrum, in technology, people, processes and engineering capabilities,” said Sivarama Krishnan, partner and APAC Cybersecurity leader, PwC.
“Our survey clearly reveals that organisations that have made cyber security a strategic priority have witnessed less disruption to business. Cyber resilience is not only key to survival of businesses but also a key driver of public trust,” he added.
The acceleration of digital payments in India post-pandemic seems to have created a new source of attack from cyber criminals.
“Post-Covid, most businesses, irrespective of their size, began readily accepting payments through digitised methods. Consumers also reciprocated to the convenient and contactless payment methods,” said Sanjay Katkar, joint MD and CTO, Quick Heal Technologies.
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“However, lack of cybersecurity hygiene among many digital payment users left them at a high risk of cybercrimes such as UPI frauds, debit or credit card cloning and those involving swapping of mobile SIM cards,” he added.
According to information security firm K7 Computing, the use of digital technology presents more opportunities for threat actors to strike at poorly secured enterprises.
“Business leaders in India are aware of and concerned by the increase in cyberattacks and are budgeting for an increase in cybersecurity expenditure in 2023 to secure their operations,” said Kesavardhanan J, founder and president of K7 Computing.
“The rollout of 5G services and rapid cloud migration are not only going to enhance our connectivity but also increase the risk of cyberattacks,” said said Parag Khurana, country manager, Barracuda Networks India.
“This connectivity is accompanied by an increased occurrence of malicious activities by cyber criminals, who often leverage the vulnerabilities in an organisation’s systems in such a way that by the time any suspicious activity is detected, a great deal of damage has already taken place,” he added.
‘To avoid such instances, it is of utmost importance for Indian companies, large or small, to invest heavily in strengthening the security of their devices and networks with web application firewall (WAF) or zero trust capabilities,” said Khurana.
Experts believe organisations need to invest in identity security solutions as part of their security strategy.
“Identities represent one of the most significant security vulnerabilities that any organisation can face today as they exist throughout the entire IT spectrum of a business and help authenticate and authorise access to sensitive data, business processes and systems,” said Rohan Vaidya, regional director, India and SAARC at CyberArk.
He said with hybrid work arrangements and cloud adoption becoming the norm, the “network is no longer the perimeter, each human and machine identity is”.
Earlier this year, hundreds of passengers were left stranded at various airports and inside an aircraft following an attempted ransomware attack on domestic air carrier SpiceJet.
Flight operations took a hit for about four hours after flight departures slowed down. Last year, online grocery platform BigBasket faced a potential data breach with information of over 20 million customers being compromised.
