‘Companies need to be more proactive on cyber security measures’

As the COVID pandemic has brought about a sea change in the operations of most companies with work from home becoming the trend over the past 8-10 months, cyber security experts are of the view that several companies still need to be more proactive in terms of strengthening their systems against cyber attacks.

Arpinder Singh, India & Emerging Markets Leader, EY Forensic & Integrity Services noted that a large number companies have been largely reactive, rather than proactive regarding cyber security during the pandemic.

"I think some organisations have been proactive and some organisations have been reactive. Reactive means they have actually had an incident and then they have run around trying to fix it, I think some companies have been smart, when someone has been hit, they have analysed that loss and then thought of protecting themselves. But that's a slow process in the pandemic... everyone has tight budget," he said

"I am seeing the proactive side, but not as much as I should be," Singh added.

He also said that with the data privacy bill coming in, companies will be directly or indirectly forced quickly adopt the best practices in terms of cyber security.

He noted that in Europe, after GDPR was introduced, European companies had taken several steps as data privacy and cyber security are linked.

"Acts like the data privacy bill, if they come faster, I think that will help the whole air, environment and infrastructure as it leads to cyber."

He added that with the amount of feedback coming in and the magnitude of e-commerce happening, the government should be considering some more policy measures to curb cyber threats.

Singh also laid stress on the training of employees both in the government and private sectors. He also said that Artificial Intelligence will play a role in keeping companies' network and infrastructure robust.