Indian CIOs Consider Fighting Security Threats Challenging

Websense, provider of web/desktop security and web filtering software for global IT companies, conducted a survey, which included 450 CIOs in India. The study revealed that security was the area that posed biggest challenge before the corporate India.

According to the research, phishing attacks lured 57% of Indian business companies during 2006 and spyware attacked 38% of Indian enterprises.

The survey was carried out in four important cities in the country - Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad during January through March 2007. It identified 450 organizations that practiced PC penetration. The organizations were grouped as small having about 100 personal computers, medium with 101-1,000 computers, and large operating 1001-5000+ computers. These classifications comprised of verticals such as IT and ITeS comprising of 33%, manufacturing -23%, BFSI -11%, education -9%, and others constituting infrastructure, telecom, media and entertainment, aviation and pharmaceuticals together comprising 15%.

In a statement Websense said security threats from the Internet worried 65% of Indian CIOs while 55% thought viruses and worms crept into their networks because employees frequently surfed the Internet. The cause of these threats are listed as downloading free software, using instant messaging applications, visiting proxy avoidance websites, browsing malicious websites and receiving pop up ads.

According to one major finding, Chennai organizations suffered the maximum impact than the organizations based in other Indian cities. The survey found that about 49% of Chennai-based organizations had experienced spyware attacks.

Of the total organizations scrutinized a little less than half, about 47% believed that portable computing devices such as laptops, PDAs and cell phones contributed significantly to security threat as against in 2006.

The study findings serves to alert and may also help Indian CIOs in rating priorities to their IT (Information Technology) security assigned to technologies that safeguard organizations against ever-new security threats, Head of South East Asia and India, Websense Inc. Mr. Surendra Singh said this in news that India eNews published on May 16, 2007. Today many enterprises primarily rely on the Internet to conduct their business. Since most employees use the Web, it's essential that decision makers in the IT departments of companies must proactively monitor, detect and protect their networks from web threats, Singh added.

Related article: Indian Financial Industry Facing Rising Online Fraud

» SPAMfighter News - 5/22/2007