WebSense, a global provider of web filtering and web/desktop security software, carried out a survey of 450 Indian CIOs, which reveals security as the biggest challenge faced by corporate India.
The survey reports 57% phishing lures and 38% spyware, during the last year.
Organizations were identified on the basis of PC penetration, and classified as small (up to 100 PCs), medium (101-1000 PCs), and large (1001-5000+ PCs). These include verticals like IT & ITeS (33%), manufacturing (23%), BFSI (11%), education (9%), government (9%), and others including infrastructure, telecom, pharmaceutical, media & entertainment, and aviation (15%).
According to the key findings, 65% of Indian CIOs are concerned about security threats emanating from the web. CIOs from Mumbai (72%) and Bangalore (71%) are more concerned about web threats as compared to IT decision makers from Chennai (51%) and Hyderabad (45%).
The report demonstrated wide-spread concern about web security, with the cumulative average being 7.8/10. The security threats received from the web included phishing, spyware attacks, botnets, keylogging, IM, peer-to-peer, and blended threats.
Over 55% organizations believe that their corporate networks are exposed to security threats. These threats can be attributed to free software downloads, use of instant messaging tools, proxy avoidance sites, visiting malicious web sites, and pop-up ads. Employee use of bandwidth clogging applications (such as streaming media), instant messaging and pop-up ads emerged as the top 3 IT help desk issues for India. In Chennai, however, issues such as 'downtime due to malware' and 'spyware on employee workstations' were among key concerns.
Just under half (47%) of the organizations that were surveyed agreed that mobile computing devices like laptops, PDAs, and mobile phones have heightened the threat to security, as compared to last year.
"The survey findings may assist Indian CIOs to prioritize their IT security spending, so that they can protect their organizations from emerging security threats," said Surendra Singh, head (South East Asia & India) of WebSense. "Today, many organizations conduct a sizeable part of their business over the web and given that a large number of employees access the internet, it is imperative that IT decision makers have a proactive approach towards monitoring, detecting, and protecting against web threats."
