73% of organisations in India are likely to experience a data breach: Report

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For Indian organisations, their worst nightmare might come true very soon.  A survey undertaken by Trend Micro, which is a global cybersecurity company, revealed that 73% of organisations in India report they are likely to experience a data breach that impacts customer data in the next 12 months.

The findings come from Trend Micro’s biannual Cyber Risk Index (CRI) report, which assesses respondents’ cybersecurity readiness compared to their chance of being attacked. The CRI polled almost 3,600 organisations of all sizes and industries in Asia-Pacific, North America, Europe, and Latin America in the first half of 2021.

The CRI is calculated on a numerical scale ranging from -10 to 10, with -10 indicating the most significant degree of risk. India’s current index value is -0.69, indicating an “elevated” risk. For the Indian organisations, the top three ranked negative consequences of an attack include lost intellectual property (IP), damage or disruption to their critical infrastructure, and costs incurred on outside consultants and experts.

“To lower cyber risk, organizations must be better prepared by going back to basics, identifying the critical data most at risk, focusing on the threats that matter most to their business, and delivering multi-layered protection from comprehensive, connected platforms,” said Vijendra Katiyar, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Trend Micro.

Further, as per the report, the top cyber threats stated include ransomware, watering hole attacks, botnets, malicious insiders, and advanced persistent threats (APT). When it comes to top security risks to infrastructure, it includes malicious insiders, cloud computing infrastructure and providers, organisational misalignment and complexity, as well as negligent insiders.

“The main challenges for cybersecurity preparedness include organisation’s IT security personnel having lack of sufficient knowledge, skill, and expertise to protect data assets and IT infrastructure; IT security function complying with data protection and privacy requirements; as well as IT security architecture having high interoperability, scalability, and agility,” noted the report.

Key findings for India from the report include:

-57% indicated that it was somewhat highly likely that they would face significant cyber-attacks in the coming 12 months.

-34% were subjected to seven or more cyber-attacks that compromised networks/systems.

-20% experienced seven or more data breaches.

-30% of respondents reported experiencing seven or more data breaches in the last year.