Indian Businesses Are Reliant On Automation For Cybersecurity

A Cisco report titled CISO Benchmark Study suggested that organizations from India depend more on automation for cybersecurity since cybersecurity officers' workloads were too heavy to deal with more tasks.

The report conducted a survey of over 3,200 security leaders from 18 countries.

As per the report, while 75 percent of Indian organizations depended on automation, more than 60 percent relied on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Over 50 percent of the Indian organizations hired an officer for cybersecurity while the rate was only 34 percent in other parts of the world.

The number of security alerts received in the country is close to the world’s average number, which is just below 5,000 alerts. This is due to the involvement of fewer vendors.

57 percent of Indian organizations used over 10 vendors last year while this figure has decreased to 29 percent this year.

But these alerts’ investigation record has worsened. Organizations could investigate 61 percent of all of the alerts last year, but now that has decreased to 57 percent.

Furthermore, the sum of legitimate alerts in the country was higher than the world’s average with the number of legitimate alerts down to 41 percent in 2019 from 52 percent last year.

Last year, over 50 percent of the surveyed organizations employed a CISO in order to deal with cybersecurity. Businesses have issued policies and procedures and set up a team while raising awareness for security among their employees as well.

However, 18 percent of Indian organizations suffered downtime for more than 17 hours due to a breach while the global average rate was only 12%.

While Indian organizations suffered very high or negligible losses in 2018, the expenses were moderate in 2019, according to Cisco. On average, data breaches cost US$5 mln in 2019, in addition to other losses.

There were more networks hosted by Indian organizations on the Cloud than any other country.

Moreover, Indian businesses have begun strengthening security products at present. While 67 percent were making use of over 10 products last year, this number was only 41 percent now. Additionally, 24 percent used over 50 products in 2018, which decreases to 11 percent now.