Data Breaches are an alarm for companies to rethink about cybersecurity

India has seen a 37 per cent increase in the cyber-attacks in 2020 as compared to in 2019, witnessing 4 Lakh pieces of malware daily and a total of 696,938 cyber-attacks. The year has been a rollercoaster ride, full of cybersecurity attacks. India is among the largest consumers of the internet, 3rd largest so-to-say, after USA and China. Hence, it will automatically be one of the largest countries suffering from various cybersecurity threats. The recent cybersecurity attacks and breaches like, The Juspay Data leak of 35 million user accounts, the BigBasket user data leak of 20 million users and the cybersecurity breach/ Malware attack on National Informatics Centre, have reinforced the need for a holistic cybersecurity strategy including multiple people and technologies that integrate security at each and every level of the organization.

Learnings from the recent attacks

Prevention is better than cure. It’s less expensive to prevent cyber-attacks than to repair the damage dealt from the cyber-attacks. Multiple organizations across industries lose a lot of money from cyber-attacks all the time. Therefore, it is imperative and highly important for all the organizations to allocate correct budgets in their cybersecurity infrastructure. According to a study conducted by IBM Security in July 2020, the average cost of containing a data breach in India has risen to 14 crores in 2020, and the cost to contain a single lost or stolen record has risen to RS. 5,522. Which is a 9.4 per cent increase as compared to 2019. Moreover, the average time taken to contain a data breach has also increased from 77 days in 2019 to 83 days in 2020.

Cybersecurity solutions are the need of the hour.

All the industries suffer from the pressing cybersecurity threats to some extent and to mitigate these major risks, all the industries will have to allocate their budgets accordingly and correctly to build a stronger security infrastructure. Although the government has taken initiative and established functional government bodies like CERT-IN, C-DAC and C-MET under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to provide incident prevention and response services, it is not enough.

A strong cybersecurity infrastructure must have multiple layers of protection spread throughout a company’s physical and digital network such as employees, computers, programs and internet networks. Integrating a combination of internal measures like Access Rights Management, Backup Protocols, Employee Education, Securing the Network, Using HTTPS on Your Site and Creating an Incident Response Plan, is imperative. Gone are the days of simple firewalls and antivirus softwares being your sole security measures. From Website intrusion & Malware propagation, Malicious Code, Phishing, Distributed Denial of Service attacks, Website Defacements, Unauthorized Scanning activities and Ransomware data leaks, all these major threats have shown us the importance of high-tech cybersecurity measures in 2020.

While trivial threats can be mitigated by internal measures severe threats require improved and specialized protocols. The big corporations are covered by their humongous budgets and adequate allocations for cybersecurity infrastructure but the SMEs suffer the most due to lack of budget and required IT knowledge. Therefore, cybersecurity startups are emerging as saviours to help maintain the smooth functioning of multiple SMEs despite the increasing cybersecurity threats. Startups like Instasafe, Sophos,

Wi-Jungle, etc are helping to curb these issues by catering to organizations with deep tech cybersecurity solutions such as AI and Cloud-based Network security, Application security, Information security, Operational security, Disaster recovery and business continuity, etc.

Conclusion

New challenges and vulnerabilities are faced by cybersecurity professionals in India and the rest of the world every day, putting multiple organisations at risk. The recent cybersecurity threats have caused havoc in the industry and the security risk goes beyond a single breach in the database or a sole connected object. The digitization has progressed rapidly catapulting the Industry towards a new digital age and simultaneously increasing the security risks. Cybersecurity is the need of the hour and it is a critical issue which needs the much-sought attention. Hence, companies need to rethink about cybersecurity and rekindle their approach towards it.

Digitization has not only paved the way towards new opportunities but has also driven the industry towards multiple unforeseen threats, highlighting the need for cybersecurity, making it a continuous, perpetual, always-on and a proactive process rather than a single point or a one-time activity. The coming years are significant for all the industries as it's the dawn of a new digital age. Since everything is happening online & digitally, the need for cybersecurity is now greater than ever. Therefore, In order, to sustain businesses online and create a safe workflow, cybersecurity solutions are of great importance.