Indian biz need to align cybersecurity budgets with growth goals: Kaspersky

NEW DELHI: Indian businesses need to align cyber security budgets with their growth objectives to ensure sustainable expansion in the face of increasing digitalisation and associated risks, a top official of Kaspersky has said.

The emergence of new-age technologies, including artificial intelligence and GenAI, is critical for companies to boost their businesses.

"In order to grow businesses, you need to digitise. If you don't digitise, you are not going to have that business growth value," Adrian Hia, Managing Director for the APAC region at Kaspersky, told PTI.

At the same time, the digitalisation of businesses increases the attack surface area, opening avenues for risks like sophisticated cyberattacks.

If Indian businesses aim to grow by 20 per cent, they also need to boost their cyber security budget by 20 per cent in the course of preparedness against these attacks, Hia noted.

Further, he said that organisations need to upkeep their systems and data while moving towards digital transformation.

In India, malware attacks climbed 11 per cent to 13,44,566 in 2024 against 12,13,528 a year ago, a report by SonicWall said earlier this month.

The number of brute force or targeted attacks is escalating in India, with every third cyber incident reported due to ransomware in 2023, cyber security firm Kaspersky has noted.

According to Hia, the cause for such attacks is the amount of data exposed on the internet, which has grown to nearly 10-fold, either through applications or web server data.

"The proliferation of smartphones, where everyone has two smartphoneshas led to data from 3 billion smartphones in India. So, the attack surface has increased," he added.

However, organisations are compelled to adopt new-age technologies to remain part of the race of modernisation and business growth.

Hia considers artificial intelligence as a "double-edged sword".

The business enablers have incorporated such modern technologies, including AI, to make their businesses more profitable even with the persisting threat of data exposure.

Looking at the swift technology adoption and possible risks, the Indian government is also making efforts in this direction.