Symantec has announced the India findings of its 2011 State of Security Survey Report, which explored the state of cybersecurity in organizations of all sizes. The survey found that Indian organizations are focusing their efforts on mitigating business risks posed by cloud, mobile and social computing, along with targeted attacks, which are making security more difficult. In fact, over half the respondents revealed that cybersecurity is more important today than it was a year ago. 

Nearly three-fourths of Indian respondents – across sectors such as education, IT, manufacturing, government and financial services – experienced cyber attacks recently, with 72 per cent indicating that they had witnessed attacks in the past 12 months. Hacking, targeted attacks and industrial espionage are perceived as threats, with one in two organizations experiencing targeted attacks. Furthermore, 92 per cent of victim organizations experienced losses due to cyber attacks, with these losses translating into actual costs for 94 per cent. While 37 per cent of respondents experienced downtime, 31 per cent faced loss of customer personally identifiable information and 28 per cent lost intellectual property. 

However, on a positive note, victims valued the revenue lost due to cyber attacks at INR 41.3 lakh, a 40 per cent reduction over the previous year.  Respondents also valued the cost of regulatory fines at INR 26.4 lakh on average and the loss of brand reputation at INR 33 lakh.

The reduced cost of cyber attacks can be attributed to the increased focus on cybersecurity, which over half the respondents said is more important now than it was a year ago. Over 53 per cent are planning significant changes to enterprise security in the next 12 months, primarily in the areas of risk management, endpoint security and web security. Businesses are also addressing the challenges posed by new computing models by allocating additional resources in terms of budget and manpower. Fifty four per cent are increasing their budgets for private cloud security and 53 per cent are planning the same for public cloud security initiatives. Similarly, businesses are also looking at manpower capacity growth for private cloud security (58 per cent) and public cloud security (62 per cent).