Cyber Security is a Cat and Mouse Game

Indian companies have become a soft target for hackers across the world. The surge in number of data breaches reported by Indian companies is making their customers wonder, if their data is in safe hands.

According to the Internet Security Threat Report, published by Symantec in March 2018, India ranks second in the list of countries most affected by cyber crimes, after the United States of America. The after-effects of a data breach are the worst nightmare for any company. In most of the breaches, attackers steal confidential customer information from the company servers, and this leads to customers losing their trust in the company’s ability to safeguard their personal information.

Companies spend enormous amounts of money to mitigate the risk caused by the breaches. The damage to reputation and the increased public scrutiny caused by a data breach are beyond repair. The cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving. With newer technologies and tools, hacking has become a child’s play to take down organizations, who neglect investing in cyber security. The pace at which vulnerability can be turned into an exploit by a hacker has reduced drastically with the advancement of technology.

According to a study done by IBM and the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a data breach in the country rose nearly 8 percent year-on-year to Rs11.9 crore. In 2017, the mean time to identify a data breach increased to 188 days in the country from 170 days in 2016. The time taken to contain them has also increased from 72 to 78 days, says the study. A recent study by Cyber Ark found 46 percent of organizations never change their cyber security strategy, even after getting breached.

“Companies need to invest more on updating the skills of their existing workforce. Zero day and ransomware attacks have made the job of securing the infrastructure, a daunting task for cyber security professionals. Hackers are always armed and seem two steps ahead. To tackle this, organizations should do frequent security audits of their infrastructure, records, archives, and monitor network activity for any anomalies. Awareness campaigns are critical as most of the attacks occurs due to negligence of users”, said Harshad Shah, Chief Information Security Officer at Global Cyber Security Response Team.

Cyber security talent gap is a major crisis facing Indian companies. Cyber security jobs will be in high demand in the coming years. India will face a shortage of 18 lakhs workforce by 2022, according to the 2017 Global Information Security Workforce.