Organisations in India Are Dedicating More Budget to Cyber Security

Palo Alto Networks, the next-generation security company, today announced the results of its report entitled ‘The State of Cyber security in Asia-Pacific’, which revealed that cyber security budgets have increased for 92 %per cent of organizations in India.

This survey was conducted to help gain deep insights around behavior and attitudes towards cyber security throughout the Asia-Pacific region, including India.

Key findings in India revealed:

There has been recent growth in cyber security budgets: Businesses acknowledge the importance of ensuring business continuity amidst the persistence and growing sophistication of cyber threats, and 92% of organisations have increased their budget for cyber security in this financial year.

Internal and external challenges contribute to cyber security issues: The three major cyber security challenges organisations face are employees’ lack of cyber security awareness (47%), risk from third-party services (43%) and migration to cloud (35%).

‘Detect and respond’ approach overrules a ‘breach prevention’ strategy, but this needs to be revisited: 79% of respondents indicated their organizations place more importance on detection and response of cyber threats than prevention. Data breaches remain costly, meanwhile, with 41 per cent of respondents revealing they have lost at least ₹ 64,55,500 (US$100,000) in financial year 2016-17 due to such breaches. This raises question around the effectiveness of responding to threats only after incidents are detected, rather than taking a preventive stance.

Cyber security measures adopted are rather basic: According to the survey, organisations predominantly adopt basic security measures. Respondents indicated the highest adoption rates for antivirus (77%) and firewall (74%), whereas anti-ransomware (37%), two-factor authentication (35% ) and biometrics (46%) have fallen on the lower end of the spectrum.

Organisations are filling their need for dedicated cyber security talent: 95% of Indian organisations feel they have a strong hold of dedicated IT teams against cyber threats – a notably high figure compared to other APAC countries with only 84%. Manufacturing and finance sectors are the top verticals when it comes to ensuring they are well-equipped with a professional team to prevent cyber threats.

Across the Asia-Pacific region, the key finding from the report is the need to promote greater cyber security awareness and education among organisations. While budgets are increasing, 46% of Asia-Pacific organisations are struggling to keep up with the increasingly sophisticated cyber threats and finding the appropriate solutions to combat them.