The Silicon Review ^Asia

Cybercrime is one of the most pressing concerns in developed and developing countries. Sectors such as IT consultancy, telecommunications, banking, and financial services, etc. are at high risk of being completely disrupted in the event of a coordinated cyber-attack. At a time when most large corporations across the world are continuously engaged in a constant struggle for IT security, firms in India seem to be lagging behind in consolidating their security infrastructure.

The latest EY Global Information Security Survey (GISS) was carried out by assessing the responses of 230 C-level executives of companies generating revenues that are anywhere between $10 million and $10 billion. The survey found out that 19% of Indian organizations have allocated sufficient budgets to put up the level of cybersecurity deemed necessary for their systems and their scale of operations. What’s more worrying is that about 69% of the corporations spend a small fraction of their revenues on cybersecurity with little awareness about the vulnerabilities of their information systems and assets. The survey also uncovered the wide chasm between the levels of security of the top-ranked companies and those at the bottom.

Most of the firms that responded to this survey belonged to the sectors of banking & finance, insurance, technology, media, and telecommunications. Subject matter experts stated that emerging companies tend to choose growth over control and compliance, being unaware that a resolute cyber-attack can nullify all the growth.

This is indeed an alarming find, especially in light of the recent string of cyber-attacks around the world that have severely affected various sectors.