Digital transformation and development of advanced technologies are progressing at full pace in India but cyber experts have expressed concern about the security of the sheer size of data that the country will have to manage, given its neighbouring adversaries as well as the growing sophistication of scammers. Indian technologists and business executives will have to collaborate, cooperate and create a comprehensive ecosystem to tackle tech-driven threats, the experts said on the sidelines of Singapore Cyber Week - 2023 held from October 17-19. In the last six months, the three most impacted industries in terms of weekly attacks per organisation were Healthcare, Education/Research and Utilities. The retail, hospitality, manufacturing and transportation sectors will also have to move fast on cybersecurity, the experts said.

 

On average, each organisation in India was attacked 2,157 times per week in the last six months, compared to 1,139 attacks per organization globally, according to a recent Check Point’s Threat Intelligence Report. “Cybersecurity is getting very complex, especially in today's evolving threat landscape with increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, which in some cases is hard to understand and keep up with,” says Vivek Gullapalli, Chief Information Security Officer, APAC at the Check Point Software Technologies. “Very often cybersecurity is mainly left to the responsibility of a company IT team to manage,” he said, calling for the involvement of the board and management to ensure that the organisation can survive cyberattack and continue doing business uninterrupted. Gullapalli suggests a holistic way of looking at threats and attacks rather than delegating to an IT person. “You need to understand the business, the ecosystem and who is coming after you, and work with the board and management to implement a prevention-first cybersecurity strategy for maximum cyber resiliency.

 

” Post-COVID, hospitals in India and generally across the world were forced into accelerated digital transformation, with a focus on a zero-touch approach as opposed to paper-based previously. However, these digital implementations were carried out without a security-first approach, leading them to suffer security gaps, and sealing their current security weaknesses, noted Gullapalli. In August, the government passed the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, marking India’s inaugural cross-sectoral personal data protection law amid concerns of heightened surveillance. This has instilled more confidence among Multi-National Corporations (MNCs), though they have been concerned about security in India, says Ashish Thapar, Vice President and Head of cybersecurity, APAC, at NTT Ltd.