Why does Cybersecurity need to be a strategy in the corporate space?

When the Prime Minister announced the launch of 5G in India, industries counted moments for a revolution in business operations and stellar customer experience. With a 20 Gbps network speed, ultra-low latency, 99.9999% reliability, and high bandwidth, 5G has the potential to reverse the business landscape and transform the corporate world. It will generate a cumulative economic impact of $1 trillion by 2035 and contribute an additional GDP of $150 billion between 2025-40.

However, on the flip, the 5G ecosystem will also invite a host of sophisticated cyber threats that may cripple company networks, big or small. 43% of all cyber breaches target SMBs, while over 80% of Indian executives believe cybercrime will be more refined for the corporate sector in 2023. Moreover, malware, ransomware, Botnets, DDoS attacks, MiTM, and phishing scams will be the talk of the town. They will leverage the multi-sliced source points and large attack surface of 5G networks to invade the corporate space. In other words, India’s data breach, which incurred INR 176 million in 2022, will grow manifold each year if companies do not bring an appropriate cybersecurity framework to the table.

4 Reasons Why Cybersecurity Needs To Be A Priority For Corporate Players

Identity theft, invasion of privacy, and crypto-jacking have adverse financial consequences, including hefty penalties, stock price crashes, lawsuits, and consumer grievances. 40% of consumers stop doing business with companies that suffer a cyberattack, and a whopping 95% believe that company trustworthiness is more important than brands. Thus, a robust risk management strategy will help corporate players accomplish the following benchmarks and win consumer confidence.

Corporate governance

India experienced 12.67 lakh cyberattack events in 2022. Yet, 56% of CEOs in the country admit to being “unprepared” to handle a cyber invasion. 60% of Indian enterprises had vacant cybersecurity positions in 2022, while 42% reported that their cybersecurity team is understaffed. More worrisome is that many Indian executives do not feel the pressing need for robust corporate governance even when 2,244 attacks happen daily. That makes company networks more vulnerable to malicious invasions and undercooked risk responses.

Cybersecurity culture is a combined effort that works top-down. A well-formed risk assessment and mitigation planning should be an imperative agenda for every board meeting. C-level executives and all personnel should keep security standards abreast to read reports, identify threats, and respond to an unprecedented major attack. They should learn policies and security best practices to build the “three lines of defence” and a “chain of trust” across all levels.

Regulatory compliance

Industries like BFSI, energy, and healthcare face heavy regulatory burdens regarding data protection, confidentiality, and network security. Company risk management should comply with the standards of HIPAA, SOC2, ISO 27001, GDPR, PCI-DSS, CCPA, and more to avoid penalties and financial loss. Organisations must embed deep cyber and risk management capabilities to develop an integrated infosec program and create mitigation controls.

They must deploy cutting-edge tools to gain real-time visibility across endpoints, IP addresses, IoT devices, SaaS applications, code repositories, IAM policies, and other cyber assets and monitor complex multi-cloud ecosystems in a single window. Moreover, their regulatory compliance must be scalable to evolve and encompass sophisticated threats over time. In the end, risk management frameworks customised to a specific business will help a company stay one step ahead of cybercriminals and gain a competitive advantage.

Brand reputation

As mentioned earlier, cybersecurity is a game-changer regarding how customers will perceive a company. There is a direct relation between cyber risk incidents like financial loss, business disruptions, fines, etc., and brand reputation damage. The impact is even more profound if public safety is at stake for companies delivering products/services in smart cities, smart grids, automated public transport, healthcare, fintech, and more.

Thus, a business strategy must integrate with a sturdy cybersecurity strategy to foster a sound commercial ecosystem and leverage the massive economic opportunity. Companies must execute regular compliance audits, real-time risk monitoring across infrastructure and application landscape, and create a collaborative workflow between employees, auditors, and pen-testers. They must integrate market-leading cybersecurity tools into their commonly-used applications to ensure continuous and seamless security compliance.

Competitive advantage

Corporate companies are inclining more toward AI, IoT, robotics, and blockchain technologies to streamline processes, improve business performance, and increase revenues. They also utilise CSR to increase brand loyalty, secure investments and attract employees. In this context, a well-framed cybersecurity strategy is a good selling point for their products that satisfies stakeholders and supply chains and builds consumer trust.

Businesses that make data-driven security decisions and maintain transparency regarding their compliance status go miles ahead of their competitors. To stay on top of their risk posture, companies must deploy end-to-end security solutions that discover cyber assets, set up risk mitigation controls, monitor networks 24x7, and cover the entire security environment in one GRC platform. Their intuitive dashboards track infosec risks across vendors, people, processes, and assets and auto-remediate threats across multiple applications. Additionally, these tools offer top-notch support in external audit scheduling, identifying loopholes, running mock “impact analysis”, and managing daily insights with alerts and reminders.

Conclusion

With fifth-generation connectivity rolling out, India will likely witness a sharp rise in cybercrime events and security breaches. As the security expert Rahul Sasi stated, “Hacktivist groups have gone up recently, and the rapid digitalisation makes the country more vulnerable to cyber attacks.” Thus, India’s corporate space must gear up with a strong cybersecurity governance strategy that will comply with multiple regulatory frameworks, strengthen corporate governance, assure all stakeholders, and enhance customer experience. This way, organisations can gain a competitive edge and etch a positive brand image to their consumers.

Author: Aayush Ghosh Choudhury, CEO & Co-Founder, Scrut Automation