24 Per Cent Of Firms Felt A Financial Impact Of $1 Million Or More Due To Cyber-Security Issues, Says Report

Nearly one in three Indian organisations are facing longer down-times and higher financial costs from security breaches and 24 per cent of firms felt a financial impact of $1 million or more in the past year in the country, a report said on Thursday (10 October).

Nearly 37 per cent of companies in India experienced a downtime of over 9 hours after their most severe breach in the past year, compared to just 30 per cent globally, according to Cisco's "2019 Asia Pacific CISO Benchmark Study".

Longer downtimes often result in higher financial costs.

"Organizations in India have made significant improvements to their cyber-security postures, in the last year. However, high workloads and alert fatigue continue to be a big challenge," said Vishak Raman, Director, Security Business, Cisco India and SAARC.

"Hence, enterprises in India are looking at increasing the level of automation in their security strategy as well as opting for an integrated end-to-end solution to secure their infrastructure," Raman added.

According to the study, 46 per cent of respondents reported receiving more than 5,000 threat alerts a day; however, 43 per cent of them went unattended, compared to 39 per cent in 2018.

Of the threats that were investigated and found to be genuine, only 41 per cent were remediated (down from 52 per cent in 2018).

"Hackers are no longer just targeting IT infrastructure but have started to attack operational technology infrastructure, intensifying the challenge for companies," the report said.

In India, 25 per cent of respondents have already experienced an attack on their operational infrastructure (versus 21 per cent globally), and 34 per cent expect this trend to increase in the next year.

When asked how challenging it is to manage a multi-vendor environment, 89 per cent said it was somewhat or very challenging to orchestrate multiple vendor alerts.

"This is in line with the global trend, with 79 per cent of respondents across the world highlighting this as an issue," noted the report based on responses from 2,000 security professionals from across the Asia - Pacific (APAC) region.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)