The term ‘security’ has always been a priority but it has also gained special importance in the recent times both due to internal and external threats to organizations. It was estimated that 83 per cent of threats faced by the Indian companies are because of internal security breach.
Internal security breaches by employees constituted 43 per cent, former employees (28 per cent) and partner/supplier (12 per cent). Of the companies, 42 per cent suffered financial losses, while 35 per cent suffered intellectual property losses.
Keeping this in mind, enterprises today are taking special measures to ensure the physical safety of their employees and the safety of the IT systems to guarantee the smooth flow of business. The current economic environment has stirred enterprises to manage their expenses diligently and at the same time not compromise on securing their organization in any way.
That virus again
According to the Frost & Sullivan survey done with CIOs across industries, 85 per cent of the respondents believed that viruses, worms and trojan horses were the major disquiet in today’s IT environment. Of the respondents, 30 per cent felt that DOS/DDOS sometimes became a major challenge for them. Though not a regular attack the effects of DOS/DDOS were very stern. Downtime and physical security were some of the other security concerns for CIOs.
“Enterprise security is no longer confined to external threats alone. Internal incidents of data loss are on the rise and enterprises need to seriously evaluate the impact such incidents will have on compliance, credibility and competition issues. India’s position as one of the leading providers of IT and knowledge services has laid the foundation for its explosive growth thus making IP very important for Indian organizations to stay competitive,” said Ajay Verma, director, channels & alliances, Symantec India.
Infringement of IP
“Infringement or loss of IP can completely erode the value addition that differentiates a market leader from the also-rans. Given the current developments that we are seeing in India and the global economy – Data Loss Prevention has to be the bedrock of good Corporate Governance or any businesses Governance, Risk and Compliance initiative”, added Verma.
Commenting on the security spending aspect for enterprises in the current scenario, Girish Trivedi, deputy director, ICT practice, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia and Middle East, stated “IT security spending is relatively low in India when compared with other fast-growing economies in the world as percentage of their total IT budget.”
“From a recent CIO study we found that 90 percent of CIOs agreed that IT security is a vital component. However, the alarming part is that a significant number of CIOs in India didn’t have any fixed budget for IT security; the procurement of IT security products in these companies was purely demand based and adherence to standards is abysmally low. Verticals like BFSI, Telecom and IT/ITES are the highest spending verticals in terms of IT security as percentage of total IT budgets,” Trived added.
India market size
The ICT Practice of Frost & Sullivan, the global growth partnership company, in its efforts to address new and continuing threats to Information Security as well as responses to the increasing risk of security breaches and data leakage, identity theft, cyber warfare, and more, hosted a multi-city summit titled ‘South Asia Enterprise Security Summit 2009’ in Mumbai and Delhi.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the enterprise network security market in India was estimated to be $129.32 million and is growing at 19.21 percent, in the year ended 2008. It will further grow at a CAGR of 10.56 percent in India. Network security includes Firewall/IP Sec VPN, SSL VPN and IDS/IPS technology. This MindXchange aimed to convene the best minds in Information Security under one roof to create an interactive milieu for exchange of knowledge and ideas.
Some of the key areas like the evolving role of the chief information security officer, challenges of building trust in digital/online world, data loss prevention, mobile security, managing security on a mimited budget and the best practices in this industry were also presented and discussed at the event.
The keynote was addressed by Aditya Sapru, senior vice president, strategic alliances, Asia Pacific, Frost & Sullivan. Eminent speakers at the event included Shekhar Kirani, VP, VeriSign India, Captain Raghu Raman, CEO, Mahindra Special Services Group, Vishal Bhadani, regional practice manager – TIS, Wipro Infotech, Ravi Vaz, senior consultant, Wipro Infotech, Laxminarayan Bhat, director, product management, APAC, Enterprise Wireless LAN & Security, Enterprise Mobility, Motorola – APAC, and Arun Gupta, CIO, Shoppers Stop.
The event was co-hosted by VeriSign, Wipro and Symantec in the gold category and in the silver category the co-host was Websense. The event was supported by ISACA’s Mumbai chapter, and the media partners were BenefIT, CIOl.com and Express Computer.
