According to the latest study by Cisco, it has become critical for companies in India to refresh the technologies and solutions in their cybersecurity infrastructure. The report highlights that 37 per cent of cybersecurity technologies used by companies in India are considered outdated by security and privacy professionals working at these organizations.
The study is based on a global survey of more than 5,100 security and privacy professionals across 27 markets. This includes more than 2,000 professionals from 13 markets in Asia-Pacific. The study aims to determine the most impactful measures teams can take to defend their organizations against the evolving threat landscape. The respondents, including professionals from companies in India, shared their approaches to updating and integrating their security architecture, detecting and responding to threats, and staying resilient when disaster strikes.
As per the report, 33 per cent of the respondents from India considered their cybersecurity infrastructure unreliable. In addition to this, 40 per cent of the respondents from India were of the opinion that India’s cybersecurity infrastructure is complex.
Lately, the companies in India have been addressing this issue by investing in modern cybersecurity technologies to improve their security posture. Nearly 89 per cent respondents in India said that their company is investing in a ‘zero trust’ strategy, with 44 per cent saying that their organization is making steady progress with adopting it and 45 per cent said that they are at a mature state of implementing it. In addition, 88 per cent of respondents said that their company is investing in secure access service edge (SASE) architecture, with 44 per cent making good progress with adoption and a similar number saying their implementation is at mature levels.
These two approaches are crucial to building a strong security posture for companies in the modern cloud-first and application-centric world. Organizations are facing multiple challenges while operating in this environment, including complexity in connecting users to applications and data across various cloud platforms, inconsistent security policies across disparate locations and networks, difficulty in verifying the identity of users and devices, lack of end-to-end visibility of their security infrastructure, etc..
According to the study, organizations with mature implementations of zero trust or SASE architectures are 35 per cent more likely to report strong security operations than those with nascent implementations.
Meanwhile, the organizations that leverage threat intelligence achieve faster mean time to repair (MTTR), with rates 50 per cent lower than non-intel users. Businesses with integrated technologies are seven times more likely to achieve high levels of process automation. Automation more than doubles the performance of less experienced staff, supporting organizations through skills and labor shortages. As the threat landscape continues to evolve, testing business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities regularly and in multiple ways is more critical than ever, with proactive organizations 2.5 times more likely to maintain business resiliency. Organizations with board-level oversight of business continuity and disaster recovery operations within cybersecurity teams is expected to outperform others.
Commenting on the report, Vishak Raman, director, security business, Cisco India and SAARC, said, “Cisco’s security outcomes study indicates where the biggest gaps lie in India Inc.’s cybersecurity posture. In response, nearly 60 per cent of companies are expanding their investments in cloud-based security technology plans. As they ramp up these efforts, they must focus on building a robust cloud-based, integrated, and highly automated architecture to ensure agility and intelligence in threat remediation and enable visibility and management of newly distributed users and applications.”
