More than half of the Indian companies have seen a considerable increase in their IT security costs, needed to counter cyber-attacks – claims the latest study by Acronis.
In light of the widespread pandemic, companies in India are reporting of more cyber-attacks than other countries globally. A recent report from Acronis, titled “Cyber Readiness Report 2020”, corroborates these findings.
More than half of the organizations in India, about 56%, have reported that their IT costs have also significantly increased in the last few months. This is 2X the global average costs – fully aimed to counter the growing cyberattacks. The threat actors are making the most out of the situation of employees working remotely, away from a secured network.
However, the study found that nearly 92% of the companies worldwide have implemented advanced security solutions and invested in technologies – in order to support remote work efficiently. This includes privacy solutions, workplace collaboration tools, as well as endpoint cybersecurity solutions.
The major challenge for businesses is to manage data protection across the company network as well as every new device (using a stack of altered solutions) is tricky, time-consuming, and expensive. Besides, the shortage of integration produces gaps in the companies’ defenses – that the cybercriminals are exploiting.
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As mentioned in the report, “31% of global companies are attacked at least once a day…9% of all companies’ report being targeted by cyberattacks at least once an hour in the past three months. Companies in India were far above the global average, reporting almost twice as many attacks as the next highest reporting countries, the US and the UAE.”
As cybercriminals are increasingly targeting remote employees, distributed denial of service (DDoS), phishing, and video-conferencing attacks are the most common techniques used. As a result, IT teams are struggling the most to combat the ongoing situation – from instructing to securing remote workers.
For instance, with more employees relying on applications like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex – nearly 39% of global companies have experienced a video-conferencing attack lately. The report indicated that India reveals the highest rates, with around 66% of companies showing having encountered video-conferencing attacks.
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Malware attacks like ransomware have surged amid during the pandemic. Even phishing attacks are occurring at exceptional levels – this is not surprising as the report found that only a few companies consider URL filtering while evaluating a cybersecurity feature. At the same time, 62% of Indian companies reported having struggled with phishing attempts.
As cited by Serguei Beloussov, Founder and CEO at Acronis in the report – “The cyber threat landscape has changed dramatically during the past few years, and in the last six months in particular. Traditional standalone antivirus and backup solutions are unable to protect against modern cyber threats.”
