Average Indian stores unprotected digital assets worth Rs 25 lakh

On an average, Indian Internet user stores unprotected digital assets, including financial data, documents and photos, worth over Rs 25 lakh on their devices, says a study by cyber security firm.

McAfee's Digital Assets Survey found that almost half of the Indian respondents used 3-4 connected devices on average but did not use adequate security to protect them.

McAfee is a part of Intel Security.

The Rs 25 lakh benchmark was kept as a measure for the total financial value across the various digital items like photos, videos and documents as estimated by the respondents.

The survey "discovered that Indian Internet users place an indicative value of Rs 25 lakh on their owned digital assets stored across their digital devices," the report said.

With multi-device usage becoming main-stream in India, the need for comprehensive and all-in-one security protection across devices becomes paramount, McAfee (India and SAARC) Managing Director Jagdish Mahapatra said.

The survey was conducted online across Indian respondents in the age group of 18-65 years, comprising 680 male and 321 female respondents.

Sixty% of the respondents admitted that they stored digital assets on devices that would be impossible to re-create, re-download or re-purchase, the survey said.

While 62% claimed that they did not protect smartphones with comprehensive security, 85% of them admitted the same for protection of tablets, it added.

Almost half of Indian respondents said they personally- owned three to four devices in their houses. Of this, 49% were male and 46% were female.

Moreover, 33% of the respondents said they spent between 5 and 10 hours a week on their mobile devices and 24% of the people admitted they devoted more than 20 hours on their mobile devices for personal use.

"In the survey, India has the second highest perceived value of their total digital assets, with an average cited value of USD 41,589 preceded by North American (the US and Canada) having an average cited value of USD 52,154," it said.

This is compared with an average value of USD 28,461 across Europe (the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands), USD 23,938 in Japan and USD 20,948 in Australia, it added.