Most Indian firms to increase cybersecurity budget in 2022, says PwC

A majority of Indian organisations (80 per cent) are likely to increase their cybersecurity budget in 2022. As per the PwC's 2022 Digital Trust Insights Survey, the risk landscape is continuously evolving and organisations are investing more than ever in cybersecurity to manage their risks. As the business environment becomes more complex due to the interconnectedness of systems and information, the impact of a risk event is not limited, rather it has a domino effect with high consequences.

Organisations are therefore gearing up to implement robust cybersecurity practices and controls to manage these risks. Moreover, 41 per cent of organisations in India predict double-digit growth in their cyber budgets in 2022, as against 26 per cent organisations globally," the survey said. The 2022 Global Digital Trust Insights is a survey of 3,602 business, technology, and security executives (CEOs, corporate directors, CFOs, CISOs, CIOs, and C-Suite officers) based in various regions. The India edition of the global survey report focuses on the responses of the executives of 109 Indian businesses.

The survey further said organisations have invested in a multitude of cybersecurity tools and technologies to manage their cyber risks. However, these technologies are not utilised to their maximum potential for making intelligent and informed cyber risk management decisions, it added. It also showed that four out of 10 organisations have either initiated the implementation or are planning to invest in cybersecurity by focusing on areas such as customer identity and access management, zero trust architecture, managed security services, cloud security and endpoint security.

As per the survey, to date, only 25% of respondents in India have realised the benefits of their cyber investments. Experts revels that, with rising digitisation, businesses have been compelled to rethink and reconfigure their cybersecurity objectives, which have become more complex. The survey also highlighted that 40% of the Indian respondents have implemented formal and mature data trust practices including data governance, discovery, protection and minimisation within their organisations. PwC further said that, in the digital age, organisations with the highest level of digital trust have become the consumer's first choice.