The cybersecurity landscape has “come some way” since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020, wrote WiPro President and Chief Operating Officer Bhanumurthy B.M. in introducing the fourth edition of the IT services company’s State of Cybersecurity Report.
“What started as a medical crisis and transformed into an economic and social crisis is being used by threat actors for targeted campaigns,” he said. “Global trade wars are taking shape and could lead to cyber espionage. Stringent data privacy regulations and rising cybersecurity concerns in boardrooms are bringing more focus and accountability on executive management.”
The comprehensive report, whose data is gleaned from a four-month research effort across 194 organizations worldwide and 21 academic, institutional and technology partners, not only considers the impact of the pandemic on cybersecurity but also suggests pathways to adapt to the new normal.
Of the top line data, two forward looking findings stand out:
- 49 percent of the worldwide cybersecurity related patents filed in the last four years are focused on the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
- Nearly half the organizations in the study are expanding cognitive detection capabilities to tackle unknown attacks in their security operations center (SOC).
Here are some of WiPro’s additional findings by the numbers:
- 86%: Espionage nation-state attacks, 46% aimed at private companies.
- 59%: Organizations understand their cyber risks, 23% highly confident about preventing cyber attacks.
- 14%: Security budgets more than 12% of their overall IT budgets.
- 65%: Perform log monitoring of operation technology (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
- 57%: Willing to share only indicators of compromise.
- 60%: Participate in cyber simulation exercises coordinated by industry regulators, National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERTs) and third-party service providers.
- 79%: Have dedicated cyber insurance policy in place.
- 87%: Plan to implement zero trust architecture, 87% plan to scale up secure cloud migration.
- 7%: Worldwide cybersecurity patents in the last four years related to 5G security.
- 83%: Healthcare organizations challenged by maintaining endpoint cyber hygiene.
- 58%: Organizations not confident about preventing risks from supply chain providers.
"There is a significant shift in global trends like rapid innovation to mitigate evolving threats, strict data privacy regulations and rising concern about breaches," said Bhanumurthy B.M. "Our research not only focuses on what happened during the pandemic but also provides foresight toward future cyber strategies in a post-COVID world.”
