Data Breach Cost in India Rises by 8% in 2 Years to $1.6 Million

A recently published joint report by the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) and PwC found that there has been a significant increase in the cost of a data breach in the last two years. The study states that the average cost of a data breach in India has gone up to INR 119 million (USD 1.6 million), an increase of 7.9% from 2017, and the average cost of a malicious insider attack rose by 15% in 2019 from last year.

Why Cyber Incidents are Increasing in India

India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world with digital adoption taking place at an unprecedented scale. According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) cyberattack incidents rose from 53,081 in 2017 to 2,08,456 in 2018, an increase of about 292%. Here are some of the top reasons why:

• As mobile and internet penetrate deeper into the Indian demographics, businesses are embracing digital transformation and cloud migration to cater to a growing base of digitally connected consumers.
• Suppliers, vendors, and other business ecosystem partners are also increasingly being on-boarded into business applications for efficiency and operational ease.
• In addition to the existing endpoints, the growing trend of BYOD (bring your own device) is multiplying the number of endpoints communicating with the network.
• With the increase in interconnectedness, the attack surface has grown vastly giving hackers and threat actors an opportunity to exploit vulnerabilities in the network.
• Attacks against endpoints using fileless malware and script-based attacks such as Powershell attacks increased by over 1000%.

How Businesses Can Protect Against Cyber Threats

This rise in sophisticated cyber-attacks and data breaches is compelling business executives to revisit their security strategy and infrastructure. It is evident that the existing security approach is proving to be inadequate, especially when the perimeter is blurring, and workloads and applications are distributed across hybrid cloud environments. Businesses also have to take cognizance of changing regulatory requirements owing to the sharp rise in breaches and stricter data privacy laws. This means that security solutions should also be gauged on their ability to help meet compliance requirements and reduce the time to audit.

Zero Trust Architecture for a Consistent Security Posture

To counter the modern security threat, businesses need to invest in Zero Trust security solutions that can maintain a consistent security posture across the entire network – data center, cloud, and hybrid environments. This can be achieved with deep visibility into all network traffic, process level endpoint control, and the ability to segment and enforce policies on applications and workloads across the data centers and distributed cloud environments. Cybersecurity for today’s business enterprise has to live up to the needs of a business that is in a state of constant transformation. Security solutions that allow businesses to implement Zero Trust while integrating with the existing infrastructure can not only reduce complexity but also deliver consistent security that is proactive in nature. Learn about ColorTokens Xtended Zero Trust Platform here.