Indian firms overconfident about cybersecurity: Study

Despite the growth in data breaches, security managers at Indian firms are incredibly confident in their cybersecurity preparedness, according to a new survey conducted by research and consultancy firm Ovum for Silicon Valley analytics firm FICO. Eighty- eight percent of executives from Indian firms said their firm was better prepared than their competitors in their industry. Financial services and utility respondents were least realistic, with 100 per cent rating their firm as above average or as top performers, while retail services had the highest percentage who said their firms were top performers at 60 per cent.

Despite this confidence, almost 1 in 3 organisations are limited to tools that provide only a point- intime assessment of what their cybersecurity risk is, or do not currently have a robust assessment program. “There is clearly a bit of disconnect among security managers regarding where they sit in relation to the competition,” said Vishal Goyal, Country Manager, India, FICO. “In India, the rapid digitisation of numerous sectors of the economy has presented the country with enormous opportunity as well as risk. Staying abreast of global standards and the rapidly changing landscape of cybersecurity remains a challenge. Complacency creeps in when companies escape data breeches, or simply haven’t picked them up, so it’s important to ensure regular robust assessments.”

In the coming year, the majority ( 56 per cent) of Indian firms feel the level of cyber- threats and data breach activity will go up. However, it was financial services firms that were the most pessimistic with 80 per cent expecting an increase. This was in contrast to Indian utility companies where all respondents thought the threat activity would remain the same.

In the survey, 40 per cent of respondents from the financial sector said the greatest influence on

● In 2019, majority ( 56 per cent) of Indian firms feel that cyber- threats and data breach activities will go up.

● Financial service firms were the most pessimistic with up to 80 per cent people expecting a major increase.

cybersecurity strategy comes from customers or investors. For retailers and telecommunications it was increases in cyberattacks and breaches that have them focused. Around 62 per cent of Indian firms say cybersecurity investment will increase in the year ahead. This rose to 67 per cent amongst Indian financial services firms and 80 per cent for utilities.

“IT leaders have greater funding than ever to protect organisations from the continuously evolving threat landscape and meet complex compliance demands,” said Maxine Holt, research director at Ovum. “These same IT leaders are undoubtedly keen to believe that the money being spent provides their organisation with a better security posture than any other – but the rapid pace of investment, often in point solutions, rarely takes an organisation- wide view of security.”

Ovum conducted the survey for FICO through telephone interviews with 500 senior executives, mostly from the IT function, in businesses from the UK, the US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, India, Finland, Norway, Sweden and South Africa. Respondents represented firms in financial services, telecommunications sector, retail and ecommerce, and power and utilities.

FICO, earlier in July, also announced free subscriptions to the Portrait portal of their FICO Enterprise Risk Suite, which gives businesses access to their cyber risk score. The score, a machine learningbased cybersecurity rating service, can show organisations how business partners and cyber insurance underwriters see their network security, and can help benchmark their performance.