~ By Mr. Govind Rammurthy, CEO and MD, eScan
Emerging technologies are disrupting the business landscape dynamically every day and pushing them to adopt these technologies to achieve maximum ROI. The adoption of new technologies such as AI, IoT, cloud, mobility etc. has facilitated businesses with convenience for both internal and external customers. It has also impacted speed of doing business and, at the same time, helped increase both productivity and profitability. However, the emerging disruptions have also brought with it a plethora of challenges for CISOs with increasing cyber-attacks such as brute force, APT, ransomware etc., which are growing rampantly enough to sabotage business networks.
In the recent past, there have been growing instances of customer databases being stolen from a food delivery start-up, stolen debit card data from a leading bank, to break down of business network of a shipping magnate. Major companies like Reliance Jio and Zomato were affected by data breaches too, which led to a slowdown in their business operations and productivity, impacting huge losses. These are the only tip of the iceberg when it comes to the known cyber-attacks or reported incidents. Various kinds of cyber-security incidents have affected many of the large Indian corporates since starting of the year with a breakout of ransomware attacks. The loss is estimated to be around billions of dollars. More than 2.5 million systems were affected across the globe by the Mirai botnet malware. Ransomware Wannacry swept the world that brought down the operations of major banks, healthcare, MNCs, Government sectors etc. India was also named in the list of top 10 infected countries by Petya ransomware during its first wave of attacks.
2017 became the year of IT Security with a focused drive on the digital, smart city and IoT demand growth. With these transitions taking place rapidly, we have to tread our path very carefully with reference to data security. As our research team predicts that with multiple devices such as Smartphones, IoTs & SMAC coming into IT networks, 2018 would bring an increasing array of challenges to IT Security than was ever faced before. Keeping data protected round the clock will become the main priority, while, at the same time, administrators will have the challenge to allow authorized personnel to access to the same. As business networks are growing beyond their traditional boundaries, allowing the users at any time, anyplace access to critical data, it becomes an easy and vulnerable target for the cybercriminals. Proactively securing the business critical data, while defending against the zero-day attacks, are going to be the top challenges for the CISOs in the coming days.
This new kind of IT infrastructures demands not only robust security but also 24×7 vigils. This requires round the clock readiness to not only defend zero-day attacks but also to proactively map and identify weaklings within network endpoints to mitigate likely risks. However, a lot could evolve with the rampant adoption of technology and creation of a comprehensive legal framework to address both cross-border and in-country incidents.
Lastly, with technologies becoming the backbone of business infrastructure, the security mantra should read “be prepared, be alert”. eScan’s research team has developed an array of multi-layered security solutions to mitigate the growing and complex cyber threats with technologies such as PBAE & TSPN.
