BENGALURU: About 52% of domestic companies said they fell victim to a cyberattack in the last 12 months despite having independent security budgets, according to a Sophos survey The Future of Cybersecurity in Asia Pacific and Japan.
The study, in collaboration with Tech Research Asia (TRA), revealed that cybersecurity budgets have remained stagnant and executive teams continue to underestimate the level of damage threats can do to organisations.
Of these breaches, 71% of firms admitted it was a serious or very serious attack, and 65% said it took longer than a week to remediate.
While attacks are increasing in frequency and severity, cybersecurity budgets have remained largely unchanged as a percentage of revenue between 2019 and 2021. At the same time, India reported the highest percentage of companies that have an independent security budget. Furthermore, they expect a rise in the median percentage of technology budgets spent on cybersecurity from 9% today to 10% in the next 24 months.
“Cyber breaches are a reality that we cannot afford to ignore. Within an organisation, there will always be multiple threats that can exploit various vulnerabilities and launch full blown cyber attacks. The only way to stop these threats is to actively hunt for them and neutralize them. This makes threat hunting an important function to mitigate the damage caused by cyberattacks,” said Sunil Sharma, managing director – sales, Sophos India and SAARC.
Overall, 44% of Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) firms surveyed suffered a data breach in 2020, up from 32% a year ago. The report found that malware, artificial intelligence/ machine learning driven attacks and nation state attacks will be the most serious threats to enterprise cybersecurity over the next 24 months.
