Getty ImagesMUMBAI: Vishak Raman; Director, Security Business, Cisco India & SAARC in a chat with ET spoke about the market expansion opportunities that the company sees in India, the changing patterns of the enterprise security market and the key threats that companies will face in the coming year.
To a question on the company's opportunities to expand market share in the security business in the country, Raman said that automation would be a key demand for customers.
The company has products around email security, proxy, workload protection in the cloud, endpoint protection. Business distribution between the network and cloud business in India has changed in the last year with security products for cloud growing faster, according to Raman. "The cloud portion of the business in India is growing more than 40% for us, which includes Cloud Email Security, Cisco Stealthwatch, and Cisco Umbrella," he said.
India continues to face threats of hacks from the 'point-of-sale' devices and networks and healthcare data could also be an easy attack target for hackers in the coming year, he said.
"If you look at the Indian enterprise from the activity point of view, almost 30% of attacks are still actually heading towards a point of sale because that is where the customer credentials are recorded. Now, attack vendors and the end segment focus are entirely different. While the point of sale is a segment, the attack vector could be phishing email or ransomware. If you look at it from a landscape point of view, the point of sale attacks is approximately 30% across multiple vectors. It could be retail, hospitality, entertainment, or e-commerce. Due to this, people would like to put a malware implant on the point of sale.What we are also seeing is very targeted attacks towards healthcare as well, since healthcare data can be much more valuable than credit card data," said Raman.
Experts suggest that healthcare data of Indian patients and private health records are widely available and captured by hackers over the dark web.
The time to hack company networks is decreasing according to Raman, as attackers are increasingly becoming innovative. Time to hack is now around 10 to 25 minutes, he said. However the time to detect attacks for companies takes a few months - the industry average being anywhere between 80 to 100 days, he said.
To a question on the company's opportunities to expand market share in the security business in the country, Raman said that automation would be a key demand for customers.
"We are seeing exciting growth. Last year we grew at about 20%. India has been one of the fastest-growing centres within APAC...We see the opportunities in a framework approach where customers today don’t want to do console hopping. How do I go from detection to remediation, and how do I optimize that remediation? This is where the most significant market lies, where automation will become a large and important piece, where Cisco would play a significant role because we do have the control points."
The company has products around email security, proxy, workload protection in the cloud, endpoint protection. Business distribution between the network and cloud business in India has changed in the last year with security products for cloud growing faster, according to Raman. "The cloud portion of the business in India is growing more than 40% for us, which includes Cloud Email Security, Cisco Stealthwatch, and Cisco Umbrella," he said.
India continues to face threats of hacks from the 'point-of-sale' devices and networks and healthcare data could also be an easy attack target for hackers in the coming year, he said.
"If you look at the Indian enterprise from the activity point of view, almost 30% of attacks are still actually heading towards a point of sale because that is where the customer credentials are recorded. Now, attack vendors and the end segment focus are entirely different. While the point of sale is a segment, the attack vector could be phishing email or ransomware. If you look at it from a landscape point of view, the point of sale attacks is approximately 30% across multiple vectors. It could be retail, hospitality, entertainment, or e-commerce. Due to this, people would like to put a malware implant on the point of sale.What we are also seeing is very targeted attacks towards healthcare as well, since healthcare data can be much more valuable than credit card data," said Raman.
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Experts suggest that healthcare data of Indian patients and private health records are widely available and captured by hackers over the dark web.
The time to hack company networks is decreasing according to Raman, as attackers are increasingly becoming innovative. Time to hack is now around 10 to 25 minutes, he said. However the time to detect attacks for companies takes a few months - the industry average being anywhere between 80 to 100 days, he said.
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