According to the company’s report, India was ranked second of the top five countries most affected by ransomware attacks in the third quarter.
The sudden rush to provide remote access to workers via network consolidation and encryption systems during the lockdown left India vulnerable to ransomware attacks in the third quarter of this year, according to the cyber security company Check Point Software Technologies.
Due to immediate pressure, many IT companies were unable to scale up their cloud protection roles, which led to expanded opportunities for cyber criminals to participate in attacks, said Check Point Software Technologies India and SAARC Managing Director Sundar N Balasubramanian to PTI.
According to the company’s report, India was ranked second of the top five countries most affected by ransomware attacks in the third quarter. Sri Lanka, Russia and Turkey ranked third, fourth and fifth respectively in the list of countries most affected by ransomware attacks.
In a survey conducted by Check Point, 71 per cent of respondents worldwide, including India, registered a rise in cyber attacks during February-March 2020, and 95 per cent said they faced additional challenges to IT protection by providing large-scale remote access for employees and handling shadow IT use.
“The spread of the pandemic has resulted in limitations on lockout, and working from home has become a way of life for most workers. Organizations in India find themselves trying to restructure their network and defence fabrics immediately, compressing some years of IT improvements in just a few weeks,” Balasubramanian said when asked about the reason for a spike in cyber attacks in India.
He said that in a hurry to allow remote access, several businesses permitted connectivity from unmanaged home computers that also lacked simple cyber-hygiene, such as modified security fixes, anti-malware, and others. Personal mobile devices have now been given connectivity to networks.
“In comparison, many Infosec (Information Technology) and DevOps (Development and Operations) cloud-based teams have not scaled their cloud security roles to the level of their conventional data centres. All this has resulted in expanded resources for cyber criminals to carry out attacks on organisations,” said Balasubramanian.
According to the Check Point report, an organisation in India sees three times as many attacks as an average organisation worldwide due to low awareness and bad cyber hygiene. “India saw a 39.2% rise in the number of attacks between the second and third quarters. The top sectors hit by ransomware in India in the third quarter were manufacturing, government and military, finance and banking, software vendors and healthcare,” said Balasubramanian.
