Securonix, Inc. announced that Kash Shaikh has been appointed President and Chief Executive Officer and member of its Board of Directors, effective immediately.

Kash succeeds Nayaki Nayyar who has been serving as the CEO of the security vendor since December 2022. Nayaki has decided to step down and focus the next phase of her career on public Board service, the company said in a press release. 

Kash is a seasoned enterprise technology Executive with Fortune 50 experience and has a record of driving profitable growth across Software, SaaS, and AI Infrastructure markets. 

He has over 30 years of experience of fostering business transformation and delivering innovative technology solutions for global enterprise organizations. He most recently served as President and CEO of Virtana, a leading hybrid-cloud infrastructure observability solutions provider.

Prior to Virtana, Shaikh served as Global Vice President and General Manager for Dell’s Enterprise Solutions Unit. Shaikh has also held leadership and executive positions at Ruckus Wireless, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, and Nortel Networks.

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A new forecast from Gartner indicates that Generative AI is all set to transform the cybersecurity space in India. The emergence of generative AI (GenAI) has caused one of the biggest disruptions in digital and business sectors in the last couple of years. “Through ethical, safe and secure implementation of this technology, CISOs can improve the performance of their security functions and enhance organizational resilience,” said Abhyuday Data, Director Analyst at Gartner. 

While managing GenAI presents inevitable challenges, there are also external factors to consider, such as regulatory concerns and the rapid adoption of cloud computing.

To effectively handle the combined impact of these forces and enhance their organization’s cybersecurity program in 2024, Gartner recommends that CISOs in India must prioritize two top cybersecurity trends:

GenAI Transforming the Cybersecurity Market: GenAI introduces new attack surfaces requiring  changes to application and data security practices and user monitoring. Gartner predicts that by 2025, GenAI will cause a spike in the cybersecurity resources required to secure it, causing more than a 15% incremental spend on application and data security.

Gartner analysts said organizations should conduct proof of concepts before incorporating GenAI into their cybersecurity programs, beginning with application security and security operations. A policy for overseeing the introduction of GenAI-based products into the organization must also be established, to ensure that all internal teams using this technology understand and adhere to a set of unified policies.

Bridging the Communications Gap with Cybersecurity Outcome-Driven Metrics: Outcome driven metrics (ODMs) are central to creating a defensible cybersecurity investment strategy. They provide a credible and defensible expression of risk appetite that supports direct investment.

“ODMs enable SRM (security & risk management) leaders to convey the value of cybersecurity investment beyond the importance of regulatory compliance,” said Data. “Organizations seeking an approach to measure cybersecurity value that resonates with executives and supports practical investment decisions must adopt ODMs.”

Spending in security to grow

Gartner forecasts that end-user spending on security and risk management (SRM) in India is expected to total $2.9 billion in 2024, an increase of 12.4% from 2023. 

Indian organizations will continue to increase their security spending through 2024 due to legacy IT modernization using cloud technology, industry demand for digital platforms, updated regulatory environment, and continuous remote/hybrid work.

In 2024, cloud security spending in India is projected to record the highest growth. The adoption of cloud and multi-cloud presents security challenges, causing an increased focus on cloud security by Indian organizations.

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Quick Heal Technologies, a global cybersecurity solutions provider, announce the appointment of Vishal Salvi as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company, effective immediately. Salvi, a former executive at Infosys, brings with him close to three decades of experience in the cybersecurity and information technology domains in India and globally.

Prior to joining Quick Heal Technologies, Salvi held the position of Global Chief Information Security Officer, Business Head of Cybersecurity Service Line & Senior Vice President at Infosys. 

Salvi had announced his exit from Infosys through a Linkedin post, on the 2^nd of July. “After seven extraordinary years at Infosys, it’s time for me to bid adieu and it is with happiness, satisfaction and pride that I will do so,” Salvi wrote in a fairly long and heartening post. 

During his tenure with Infosys, he played a crucial role in shaping the information and cyber security strategy across the Infosys Group. Salvi’s extensive expertise in cybersecurity and information technology has been honed through various leadership roles at renowned organizations such as PwC, HDFC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Global Trust Bank, Development Credit Bank, and Crompton Greaves.

Dr. Kailash Katkar, Chairman and Managing Director, Quick Heal Technologies, will continue the role of Chairman and Managing Director. 

In response to his appointment, Vishal Salvi commented, “I am deeply honored to assume the role of CEO at Quick Heal Technologies Ltd. Quick Heal has earned a solid reputation as a trusted leader in the cybersecurity industry, and I am incredibly excited to lead this exceptional team into the future. In the face of constantly evolving cyber threats and the critical importance of prioritizing digital security, I am fully committed to the shared goal of making ‘Cybersafety a fundamental right for all.’ I am eager to drive growth, cultivate a culture of innovation, and provide unmatched value to our customers and stakeholders. Together, we will strive to create a cyber-secure world for everyone.”

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When Shweta Srivastava joined JK Cement in the last September as Head of IT Applications, she had quite a task at hand – to oversee the company’s application landscape which encompasses various go-to-market applications. This might seem like a fairly uncomplicated responsibility, but beneath it all, what it really means is that Shweta is responsible for keeping JK Cement’s key stakeholders happy. The brand has a large ecosystem of internal users, partners, distributors and the ever-growing network of influencers like painters, masons among others. And delivering the right experience and value to all these stakeholders through different applications was certainly a tall order. 

Thus begins Shweta’s journey with low-code, no-code (LCNC) platforms that have been transforming the application development arena. 

Shweta says that LCNC’s visual modelling elements, drag-and-drop interfaces, and pre-constructed templates make it possible for teams to quickly spin up applications that align perfectly with the business requirements. 

In this exclusive interview with CIO Dimension, Shweta shares some profound insights derived from her hands-on experience with LCNC tools. 

Watch the full video here: 

While LCNC tools give an edge, they do come with their own challenges, says Shweta. “The general perception is that citizen developers can just drag and drop a few things and the application is ready in no time. But, such developers are typically biased with the outcome that is attached with their immediate requirements. For LCNC initiatives to be successful and sustainable, we need to follow certain best practices, see how efficiently one can create application objects and use it for multiple applications.” 

Scalability is an important factor while working with LCNC tools. You don’t want to make something so closed loop that it cannot be scaled further, she adds. 

Shweta also touches upon aspects like API security, shadow IT in LCNC environments and how those can be effectively addressed. She strongly advocates for the synergistic blend of digital technologies and the human touch in crafting optimal customer experiences. 

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For today’s digital businesses, the perimeter isn’t static. The perimeter rather consists of all the data and users that an organization holds. And, that perimeter is everywhere – across devices, networks, and clouds. Cyber incidents have, therefore, become an inevitable reality. A global report points out that, each organization faces an average of 1,248 attacks per week. 

In our latest episode of Innovation Talk series, we spoke to Maheswaran S, Country Manager, Varonis India, to understand the evolving threat landscape. 

“CISOs are taking a closer look at whether their existing controls are aligned with their organization’s attack surface. Most organizations have invested in assets and perimeter-centric controls, which is important. What is equally important is to have controls around data. Security must shift from being threat-centric to being user and data-centricl” says Maheswaran. 

Watch the full video here: 

As a security industry veteran with over two decades of experience, Maheswaran has been working with enterprises across the APAC region to guide their data protection strategies. 

He believes that data and users are the weakest link in the system. 

In an organization with a headcount of 10,000+, an average employee has access to over 12 million files while all she needs is a few thousand files. This has led to overexposure of data and increased attack surface, he adds. 

AI and automation technologies can greatly help in analyzing and reducing a company’s attack surface and blast radius. “Automation has a wide range of application across the security value chain, right from addressing the skills gap, creating awareness among employees to data security, incident management and so on,” says Maheswaran. He goes on to talk about effectively leveraging automation technologies and how CISOs can achieve better RoI from their cybersecurity investments.  

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A new survey has revealed some glaring gaps in enterprise security ecosystem in the new normal. Even when large majority of security leaders believe that they have been successful in inculcating a strong ‘security culture’ in their organization, there appears to be a growing disparity in how employees experience that culture. 

The recent research conducted by email security company Tessian reveals that a significant percentage of employees are not engaged in their organizations’ cybersecurity efforts and don’t understand their role in keeping their company secure. Nearly one in three (30%) employees do not think they personally play a role in maintaining their company’s cybersecurity posture. 

This is even though security teams, on average, rate their company’s security culture 8 out of 10. The survey indicates that the strong security culture, as perceived by IT and security leaders, does not guarantee fewer security incidents, which is evidenced by the alarming number of security incidents reported. In fact, 3 out of 4 organizations in the survey say they experienced a security incident in the last 12 month. And a significant portion of these breaches reported involved human error – such as employee downloading data on a personal storage device and employee falling for phishing attack. 

This widening gap, according to Tessian, is the result of employee disengagement across the board. And security leaders are not acknowledging this gap. In fact, when asked what has the most influence over a positive security culture, security leaders chose technology and training over engaged employees, communication channels, and senior exec buy-in. 

This seems to be the fundamental problem that leads cybersecurity programs that are largely ineffective. Drawing out comprehensive programs without employee engagement isn’t helping the cause. Imagine this: 36% employees find security awareness programs out-right boring. Worst still, there is a sharp divide between what security teams think they’re providing, and what employees are actually absorbing – 80% of security leaders said there’s a feedback loop for employees to report security incidents, still nearly half of employees don’t even know who to report security incidents to. 

In many cases, employees are not just disengaged, they have even had negative experiences, with 1 in 2 reporting negative experience with a phishing simulation. Often authoritarian approaches and virtual programs turn out to be futile as opposed to positive reinforcement. 

The need of the hour is to ensure that all employees take an active role in a company’s cybersec measures. As the survey rightly states: “cybersecurity is a team sport. The burden sits with everyone, across all levels and departments, from the Chief Finance Officer to a recently hired sales engineer.” 

The report also recommends that building touch points throughout the employee lifecycle, clear communication, and technology that helps build self-efficacy are all good places to start to drive employee engagement. Security teams should play an active role in not just employee onboarding, but in offboarding as well – 45% of IT leaders said that incidents of data exfiltration have increased in the last year, as people took data when they left their jobs. 

“To get people better engaged with the security needs of the business, education should be specific and actionable to an individual’s work. It is the security teams’ responsibility to create a culture of empathy and care, and they should back up their education with tools and procedures that make secure practices easy to integrate into people’s everyday workflows. Secure practices should be seen as part of productivity. When people can trust security teams have their best interest at heart, they can create true partnerships that strengthen security culture,” said Kim Burton, Head of Trust and Compliance at Tessian. 

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The fourth annual Data Protection Trends Report from Veeam found that companies are challenged with more complex hybrid IT environments and are raising budgets to fend off cyberattacks as well as keep up as production environments continue to diversify across various clouds. The result is that IT leaders feel they aren’t sufficiently protected. A top priority of organizations this year is improving reliability and success of backups, followed by ensuring that Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) protection is equitable to the protection they rely on for datacenter-centric workloads.

Highlights of the Veeam Data Protection Trends Report 2023:

• Modern Data Protection is needed to keep businesses running: Four out of five organizations believe that they have a gap, or a sense of dissatisfaction or anxiety, between what their business units expect and what IT services can deliver. 82% have an ‘Availability Gap’ between how quickly they need systems to be recoverable and how quickly IT can bring them back. 79% cite a ‘Protection Gap’ between how much data they can lose and how frequently IT protects their data. 
• Data protection budgets are increasing: Globally, organizations expect to increase their data protection budget in 2023 by 5%, which is notably higher than overall spending plans in other areas of IT. Of the 85% of organizations planning on increasing their data protection budgets, their average planned increase is 8.3% and often in concert with increased investments in cybersecurity tools.
• Despite the awareness and increase in preparedness, ransomware is winning: Cyberattacks caused the most impactful outages for organizations in 2020, 2021 and 2022, according to the report. 85% of organizations were attacked at least once in the past 12 months; up from 76% in last year’s report. Specifically, recovery is a main concern as organizations reported that only 55% of their encrypted/destroyed data was recoverable from attacks. According to the survey, the single most important aspect that organizations are looking for in a Modern Data Protection solution is the “integration of data protection within a cyber preparedness strategy.”
• Ransomware is the biggest hindrance to Digital Transformation: Due to its burden on budgets and manpower, ransomware and the current volatile cyber security landscape are taking priority for IT teams. This is causing IT resources and budgets originally allocated towards Digital Transformation initiatives to pivot to cyber prevention. 
• Container-centric workloads are growing in popularity: Containers, and more specifically Kubernetes, show all the characteristics of a mainstream production platform, with the same kinds of data protection strategy disparities as seen in early adopters of SaaS five years ago or virtualization 15 years ago. 52% of respondents are currently running containers, while 40% of organizations are planning to deploy containers – and yet, most organizations are merely protecting the underlying storage, instead of holistically protecting the workloads themselves. 

“IT leaders are facing a dual challenge. They are building and supporting increasingly complex hybrid environments, while the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks is increasing,” said Danny Allan, CTO and Senior Vice President of Product Strategy at Veeam. “This is a major concern as leaders think through how they mitigate and recover business operations from any type of disruption. Legacy backup approaches won’t address modern workloads – from IaaS and SaaS to containers – and result in an unreliable and slow recovery for the business when it’s needed most. This is what’s focusing the minds of IT leaders as they consider their cyber resiliency plan. They need Modern Data Protection.”

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