Sophos has announced the findings of its report, ‘The Future of Cybersecurity in Asia Pacific and Japan – Culture, Efficiency, Awareness', which reveals that the success of an organisation’s cybersecurity investment lies not just in buying technology, but with corporate culture, employee education and path-to-purchase also playing a critical role.
As per the survey,across India, the majority (66 percent) of business decision makers believe lack of security expertise is a challenge for their organisation, with 69 percent observing recruitment of skills to be a struggle, while, 66 percent of them find it hard to stay up to date with cybersecurity technologies. This comes down to the set-up of cybersecurity within organisations, which commonly sees IT staff tasked with security in addition to their other responsibilities.
90 percent of Indian organisations believe the biggest challenge to their security in the next 24 months will be improving cybersecurity awareness and education among employees and their leadership. In fact, 30 percent of Indian organisations said they will be outsourcing and conducting in-house skill development, training, and awareness for their employees in the next 24 months.
In India, two-in-five (43 percent) of organisations have a dedicated cybersecurity budget – in most cases budgets are included as part of other broader IT or other departmental spend. Organisational IT security structures are diverse - one third of those surveyed have a dedicated CISO, another third sees cybersecurity led by an IT leader, and the remainder gives responsibility to another executive, such as the CTO. The majority of organisations continue to keep most capabilities in-house and only in a few areas like penetration testing and training, does outsourcing become a more common approach.
Only 19 percent of Indian organisations are regularly making significant changes to their cybersecurity approach, with some (38 percent) intending to make changes to their security approach in the next six to 24 months. In line with this approach, 79 percent of Indian business decision makers would want to adopt deeply-integrated or synchronized security solutions that can detect, investigate and respond to cyberthreats. The main triggers for security updates - beyond changes to overall security posture - are technology and product developments, compliance and regulation requirements, and growing awareness of new attacks.
“As the threat landscape evolves, businesses too need to advance their defense mechanisms with synchronized security solutions that are designed to strengthen their cybersecurity posture,” said Sunil Sharma, managing director, sales, Sophos India & SAARC. “Cybersecurity is a shared responsibility and while IT teams must be proactive in their response to cyberthreats; aware and knowledgeable employees and leadership teams pave the way for organisations to better detect, protect and respond.”
