Even as the border tensions with China along the line of actual control (LAC) has de-escalated in recent times but that certainly does not seem to be the case for Chinese hackers attacking key Indian installations.

According to a recent report by Sophos- a cybersecurity solutions provider and Tech Research Asia (TRA)-IT analyst, research and consulting firm, cybersecurity attacks impacted 52% of organisations in India over the last 12 months. Also of these breaches, 71% of firms admitted that it was a serious or very serious attack and 65% said it took more than a week to fix the damage.

In its recent report, ‘The Future of Cybersecurity in the Asia Pacific and Japan', the report pointed out that despite the increase in frequency and severity of these attacks, cybersecurity budgets by the majority of companies remained largely unchanged as a percentage of revenue between 2019 and 2021.

However, the report claims that Indian companies are among the highest percentage of companies that have an independent security budget. “Our findings show there is the budget allocated for cybersecurity in India, but it isn't enough. Indian organisations need to view cybersecurity as a value to the business and increase their budgets accordingly,” Sunil Sharma, managing director – sales, Sophos India and SAARC said.

According to the report, overall 44% of the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) organisations surveyed suffered a data breach in 2020, up from 32% in 2019. Of these successful breaches, 55% of companies rated the loss of data as either ‘very serious' (24%) or ‘serious' (31%). About 17% of organisations surveyed suffered at least 50 attacks, per week.

“Overall, 44% As cyberattacks continue to rise, the report found that malware, AI/ML-driven attacks and nation-state attacks will be the most serious threats to enterprise cybersecurity over the next 24 months,” the study said.