1 in 2 Indian firms faced a cyber breach in past 2 years: IBM

One in two Indian companies have experienced a data breach involving the loss or theft of more than 1,000 records containing sensitive or confidential customer or business information in the past 2 years and the COVID-19 has only accelerated the cyber attacks, according to Sandip Patel, General Manager, IBM India/South Asia.

Since March 11, when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the WHO, the IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS) team has observed a massive over 6,000 per cent increase in COVID-19 related spam

"We are dealing with one of the biggest disruptions of our times, which has made the role of cyber resilience more pronounced and profound. Digital journeys have accelerated, and organisations are realigning their priorities to emerge smarter from the COVID crisis," Patel said in a blog post this week.

For 46 per cent of Indian firms, data breaches led to significant disruption to their IT and business processes, according to a recent global survey conducted by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by IBM Security.

"No wonder, each time we are faced with a market or socio-economic disruption, cyber resilience emerges as one the most critical business concerns and an imperative," said Patel.

Cybersecurity primarily deals with the protect and defend' mechanism from data thefts, while cyber resilience helps organisations to respond and recover' in the event of disruption and become more capable of withstanding future disruption.

"Cyber resilience focuses on both the technology and human aspects of end-to-end business continuity, especially in wake of advanced, incessant and evolving threats," informed Patel.

According to him, adoption of a cyber resilient framework calls for a fundamental shift of mindset and it is heartening to see that Indian organisations are steadily moving in the direction.

"Almost 45 per cent of Indian respondents highlighted their cyber resilience improved. They attributed the progress to hiring of skilled personnel, improved information about governance practices and visibility into applications and data assets".

"A strong privacy posture coupled with automation, machine learning, artificial intelligence and orchestration further strengthened cyber resilience," he noted.

The need of the hour is use of open, interoperable platforms as well as automation technologies that can help reduce the complexity of responding across disconnected tools.