A Palo Alto survey findings revealed that, although India saw a remarkable 75% increase in cybersecurity budget allocation for 2023 compared to the previous year (one of the highest increases in the APAC region), it also experienced the highest number of disruptive cyber attacks.

Palo Alto Networks surveyed 200 Indian IT decision-makers, CTOs, CIOs, and Senior Directors to understand the state of cybersecurity in India. The respondents belonged to sectors such as Banking & Finance, Essential Services, Telco/Tech/Communications, Retail/Hotel/F&B, Transport & Logistics, and Manufacturing. 

India faces a substantial risk of cyber attacks targeting its critical infrastructure, public sector, and essential services, according to the findings. A notable 67% of Indian government and essential service entities reported encountering a surge of over 50% in disruptive attacks.

Key findings from the survey include:

Industries:

• 66% of Indian manufacturing firms faced increased risks from unsecured IoT devices connected to the network, far more than other sectors.
• 83% of Transport and Logistics organizations perceive their risk level as high or very high.
• An overwhelming 95% of businesses in India claim they are actively moving to an increasingly automated security stack.
• 48% of Indian Public, Transport & Logistics organizations and 50% of Manufacturing organizations sectors believe 5G adoption will widen security loopholes.
• A higher than average 34% of Indian banking and financial services say cloud attacks will disrupt business. 
• 69% of Indian Telcos have faced newfound risks from increased reliance on cloud-based services and apps.

Cybersecurity risks:

• 45% of Indian businesses saw more than 50% increase in disruptive attacks – the highest in APAC. 
• 67% of Indian government and essential services experienced more than 50% increase in disruptive attacks.
• At 35% Indian organizations are more concerned about social engineering attacks than the APAC average (29%). 
• 60% of Indian organizations are concerned about malware (ransomware, spyware, adware) attacks the most. 57% of Indian Telcos are concerned about Ransomware the most. 
• 94% of Indian organizations perform regular assessments and forensics for OT related cybersecurity incidents, this is positive news. Likely driven by the fact that 89% of these organizations have IT and OT cybersecurity professionals working under the same/ combined team, higher than the SEA average of 82%.
• On the other hand, 24% of these organizations have their OT systems connected with their Enterprise IT network (not fully air gapped or protected via a dematerialized zone); a definite cause of concern.

Security outlook:

• 68% of Indian respondents say ChatGPT will positively impact business tasks like content creation and report generation.
• India leads APAC in cloud migration, with 80% of businesses already having a large proportion of infrastructure on the cloud.
• Over 80% of Indian businesses discuss cybersecurity at the board level at least every quarter. 
• 42% of Indian organizations say they are adjusting their cybersecurity strategy to adopt cloud security. 
• 94% of Indian organizations said they have a 5G strategy in place. However, 45% of these organizations said that proper segmentation of 5G networks was of top concern to them (highest in APAC). 

“Securing essential services networks is crucial to protect critical infrastructure and ensure the uninterrupted delivery of essential services, safeguarding public safety and national stability. Our findings show that the transport, manufacturing, and public sectors have borne the brunt of advanced attacks. As India embraces digital transformation, it is mission critical to have a cybersecurity-first approach,” said Anil Valluri, Managing Director & Regional Vice President of India & SAARC, Palo Alto Networks.

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A new research from SASE vendor Netskope, shows that over 400 distinct cloud applications delivered malware in 2022, nearly triple the amount seen in the prior year. Netskope researchers also found that 30% of all cloud malware downloads in 2022 originated from Microsoft OneDrive.

“Attackers are increasingly abusing business-critical cloud apps to deliver malware by bypassing inadequate security controls,” said Ray Canzanese, Threat Research Director, Netskope Threat Labs. “That is why it is imperative that more organizations inspect all HTTP and HTTPS traffic, including traffic for popular cloud apps, both company and personal instances, for malicious content.”

Rise in Uploads to Cloud Apps Means Rise in Malware-Delivered Downloads 

The most significant change in cloud application use in 2022, compared to 2021, was the marked increase in the percentage of users uploading content to the cloud. According to Netskope data, over 25% of users worldwide uploaded documents daily to Microsoft OneDrive, while 7% did so for Google Gmail and 5% for Microsoft Sharepoint. The drastic increase in active cloud users across a record number of cloud applications led to a sizable increase in cloud malware downloads in 2022 from 2021, after remaining close to flat in 2021 compared to 2020.

The correlation between uploads and downloads among the most popular apps is no coincidence. Nearly a third of all cloud malware downloads originated from Microsoft OneDrive, with Weebly and GitHub coming in the next closest among cloud apps at 8.6% and 7.6%, respectively. 

Cloud-delivered malware is more prevalent than web-delivered malware

Industries have increased their reliance on cloud applications and cloud infrastructure to support business operations over the last several years—a trend further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and a worldwide shift toward hybrid work. As a result, cloud-delivered malware is now responsible for a much higher percentage of all malware delivery than ever before, especially in certain geographic regions and industries.

In 2022, several geographic regions saw significant increases in the overall percentage of cloud vs. web-delivered malware compared to 2021, including:

• Australia (50% in 2022 compared to 40% in 2021)
• Europe (42% in 2022 compared to 31% in 2021)
• Africa (42% in 2022 compared to 35% in 2021)
• Asia (45% in 2022 compared to 39% in 2021)

In certain industries, cloud-delivered malware also became more predominant globally, especially:

• Telecom (81% in 2022 compared to 59% in 2021)
• Manufacturing (36% in 2022 compared to 17% in 2021)
• Retail (57% in 2022 compared to 47% in 2021)
• Healthcare (54% in 2022 compared to 39% in 2021)

Cyber Preparedness: The Remote Workforce is Here to Stay

Companies have made considerable adjustments to enable remote and hybrid workplaces to flourish. While some industries sought to bring employees back to the office on a more frequent basis in 2022, remote work options appear to remain largely in place. According to Netskope data, user dispersion—the ratio of the number of users on the Netskope platform to the number of network locations from which those users’ traffic originates—is 66%, the same percentage it was at the start of the pandemic over two years ago.

Remote and hybrid work dynamics continue to pose multiple cybersecurity challenges, including how to securely provide users access to the company resources they need to do their jobs and how to scalably and securely provide users access to the internet.

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