'Information security a top concern for management', Uniken summit reveals

Corporate decision-makers including C-suite executives got together to participate in the Uniken Security Innovation Summit, 2014 – the maiden edition of the summit hosted by Uniken, and Indian Software Product Industry Round Table (iSPIRT), a think-tank of next-generation software product companies, to address the growing need for future-proof information security solutions and identify steps towards securing digital enterprises - today, tomorrow & beyond.

Sanjay Deshpande, co-founder and CEO, Uniken, said, “With the recent news of organised crime breaches, info-security clearly is no more a concern of just technology practitioners of an enterprise. The cyber-security solutions landscape is rapidly evolving and so are methods and techniques of cyber-crime. It is becoming increasingly clear that cyber-security and the corresponding risk mitigation strategies need to be intricately woven into strategic corporate decisions given the financial, reputational and legal impact on organisations. Hence, there is the need for more concerted and synergistic efforts at industry-level to overcome challenges and seek innovative and future proof solutions to the ever-evolving, rapidly growing concern of cyber-security.”
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Speaking about the advancing landscape of cyber-threats, Tal Mozes, leader of Hacktics Advanced Security Centre and Technology Advisor to Uniken, said, “There are many mega trends - social media, Big Data, mobile and digital transformation - that are shaping the way enterprises and its stakeholders interact with each other. While each of these trends are business enablers, they each also pose various threats. On the other hand, digital crime is also becoming more organised, moving toward Advanced Persistent Threats.”

“In a rapidly evolving scenario such as this, cyber-security can no longer be an isolated function but requires a focused effort and collaborative conversations among the various functions in an organisation, driven from the top,” Mozes added.

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Advocating the need for a paradigm shift in dealing with cyber-security, Menny Barzilay, former head of IT audit, Bank of Hapoalim and Technology Advisor to Uniken said, “Today, there is a shift in the way organisations are dealing with cyber-security, towards putting larger efforts into prevention rather than just reactively protecting interests. Organisations are beginning to recognise and acknowledge that many of the current systems, while offering security, do not safeguard and proactively prevent many of the emerging threats. There is a stated need for organisations to find innovative and efficient ways to combat cyber-security concerns.”

Sameer Ratolikar, CISO, Axis Bank, and Arun Gupta, CIO, CIPLA participated in an interactive session to address challenges in cyber-security for Indian organisations, the evolving roles of the CIO and emergence of the Chief Information Security Officer.

The summit recognised that recent instances of data-breaches and info-security lapses have had a far-reaching impact on an organisation on various fronts: financial, legal and reputational.