73% of Indian companies saw 25% jump in cyber threats post Covid-19: Cisco

Secure access is seen as the top cybersecurity challenge faced by the largest proportion of organisations

Hyderabad: Companies in India are seeing a significant increase in the cybersecurity challenges they face amid the shift to mass remote working, a new study by Cisco shows. According to the study, 73 per cent of organisations in the country have experienced a 25 per cent or more jump in either cyber threats or alerts since the start of Covid-19.

Cisco’s Future of Secure Remote Work Report revealed many Indian organisations were unprepared to make the accelerated transition to a remote workforce at the outset of the pandemic. About two-thirds (65 per cent) of organisations adopted cybersecurity measures during Covid-19 to support remote working.

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The study is based on a survey of over 3,000 IT decision-makers globally, including over 1,900 respondents across 13 Asia Pacific markets, including India. It highlights the cybersecurity challenges companies faced as they shifted the majority of their employees to a remote working arrangement in a really short period of time.

With users connecting from outside the corporate walls, secure access is the top cybersecurity challenge faced by the largest proportion of Indian organisations (68 per cent) when supporting remote workers. Other concerns include data privacy (66 per cent) and protection against malware (62 per cent).

“With organisations forced to shift to a new way of working almost overnight, the newly distributed workforce became a focal point for malicious actors. As a result, the pandemic has amplified the criticality of cybersecurity and brought new complexities to the fore,” said Vishak Raman, director, Security Business, Cisco India & SAARC.

“Now, as remote work continues to garner traction, organisations are turning their attention to building a robust cybersecurity foundation, with cloud security emerging as the top investment for 31 per cent of companies in reinventing their workplaces post Covid-19,” Raman added.

Remote working

Endpoints are a growing challenge for organisations to protect, as users connect from their home Wi-Fi or use their personal devices to connect to corporate applications. About two out of three respondents stated that office laptops/desktops (66 per cent) and personal devices (58 per cent) posed a challenge to protect in a remote environment, followed by cloud applications at 42 per cent.

One trend that emerged in recent months is that a hybrid workplace – where employees move between working remotely and in the office – is the future. Over half (53 per cent) of the organisations in India said they expect more than half of their workforce to continue working remotely post-pandemic.

Cybersecurity now tops corporate priorities, with 84 per cent of organisations in India saying that cybersecurity is now a top priority for them. The study highlights that 77 per cent of organisations in the region plan to increase their future investment in cybersecurity due to Covid-19.

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