Indian IT Security Spending Low Compared To Other Growing Economies

The term ‘security’ has always been a priority but it has also gained special importance in the recent times both due to internal and external threats to organisations. It was estimated that 83 percent of threats faced by Indian companies are because of internal security breach. Internal security breaches by employees constituted 43 percent, former employees (28 percent) and partner/ supplier (12 percent).

Of the companies, 42 percent suffered financial losses, while 35 percent suffered intellectual property losses. Keeping this in mind, enterprises today are taking special measures to ensure the physical safety of their employees and the safety of the IT systems to guarantee the smooth flow of business. The current economic environment has stirred enterprises to manage their expenses diligently and at the same time not compromise on securing their organisation in any way.

According to the Frost & Sullivan survey done with CIOs across industries, 85 percent of the respondents believed that Viruses, Worms and Trojan Horses were the major disquiet in today’s IT environment. Of the respondents, 30 percent felt that DOS/DDOS sometimes became a major challenge for them. Though not a regular attack, the effects of DOS/DDOS were very stern. Downtime and physical security were some of the other security concerns for CIOs.

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“Enterprise security is no longer confined to external threats alone. Internal incidents of data loss are on the rise and enterprises need to seriously evaluate the impact, such incidents will have on compliance, credibility and competition issues. India’s position as one of the leading providers of IT and knowledge services has laid the foundation for its explosive growth, thus making IP very important for Indian organisations to stay competitive. Infringement or loss of IP can completely erode the value addition that differentiates a market leader from the also-rans. Given the current developments that we are seeing in India and the global economy - Data Loss Prevention has to be the bedrock of good Corporate Governance or any businesses Governance, Risk and Compliance initiative,” said Ajay Verma, director, Channels & Alliances, Symantec India.

Girish Trivedi, deputy director, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia and Middle East, said, “IT security spending is relatively low in India when compared to other fast-growing economies in the world as a percentage of the total IT budget. From a recent CIO study, we found that 90 percent of CIOs agreed that IT security is a vital component. However, the alarming part is that a significant number of CIOs in India didn’t have any fixed budget for IT security; the procurement of IT security products in these companies was purely demand based and adherence to standards is abysmally low. Verticals like BFSI, telecom and IT/ITeS are the highest-spending verticals in terms of IT security as a percentage of total IT budgets.”