Indian firms lost $500,000 to cyber attacks in 1.5 years: CISCO survey

Cyber attacks in the country caused financial damages to the tune of about $500,000 to India companies in the last 12-18 months, says a study.

"...more than half of all attacks resulted in financial damages of more than $500,000, including, but not limited to, lost revenue, customers, opportunities, and out-of-pocket costs," the technology firm Cisco 2018 Annual Cybersecurity report released today said.

Cisco interviewed around 200 organisation across vertical in the country including financial services, manufacturing, government (including defence), telecommunication, retail, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, education.

The report said that security is getting more complex and scope of breaches is expanding.

"Defenders are implementing a complex mix of products from a cross-section of vendors to protect against breaches. This complexity and growth in breaches has many downstream effects on an organizations ability to defend against attacks, such as increased risk of losses," the report said.

As per the survey, Cisco found that 30 percent of security professionals said they used products from 25 to 50 vendors and 54 percent of breaches affected more than half of their systems in 2017.

The report noted that supply chain attacks are increasing in velocity and complexity and called for need to be aware of potential risk of using software or hardware from organizations that do not appear to have a responsible security posture.

"These attacks can impact computers on a massive scale and can persist for months or even years. Two such attacks (in India) in 2017, Nyetya and Ccleaner, infected users by attacking trusted software," the report said.

The survey found that security professionals see value in behavioral analytics tools in locating malicious actors in networks as 67 percent of security professionals said behavior analytics tools work well.

"In today's zero perimeter world, where data is everywhere, defenders need to relook at cybersecurity from strategic point of view. It is important that security adopts new tools like Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning and incorporate best strategies to mitigate risks," Vishak Raman, Director, Security Sales, Cisco India & SAARC said.

The Cisco 2018 Annual Cybersecurity Report shows that 50 per cent of organisations in India are reliant on automation, 53 per cent are reliant on machine learning and 51 percent are highly reliant on artificial intelligence.