India Sees One Cyber Security Incident Every 10 Minutes

By Jaipal Kolapurath, VP & Regional Head – India (West), Paladion Networks

New research from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) provides some distressing news. In 2017 alone, Indian organizations reported 53,000 security incidents, or one new reported security incident every 10 minutes—and these are only those that have been reported.

In just the first two months of 2018 alone, we have witnessed multiple high-profile security incidents like the breach of US Homeland Security data and the Aadhaar data breach. This growing number of worldwide security incidents tells us one thing: global cybercrime is fast creating a struggle of truly epic proportions.

The situation in India specifically is even more alarming. As the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) recently revealed, Indian organizations reported more than 53,000 security incidents in 2017 alone – a security incident reported every ten minutes.

Jaipal Kolapurath, VP & Regional Head – India (West), Paladion Networks

And these figures only include incidents that were reported. It is highly likely that hundreds of thousands of breaches go unnoticed and unreported every day, especially as Indian organizations increasingly rely on automation, and adopt cloud-based systems. The new systems are adding new vulnerabilities to their IT infrastructures, and conventional rule-based security systems simply cannot defend against cybercriminals who are ready, willing, and have the ability to exploit these new vulnerabilities.

Cybercriminals now enhance the accuracy and speed of their attacks by deploying advanced machine learning algorithms. These attacks are more likely to breach their targets, and when they do, the current security systems simply can’t respond fast enough to contain the massive breaches and the resultant fallouts.

Preventative cybersecurity approaches are no longer enough to withstand this rising tide. To deal with the current and emerging threat landscape, we need to deploy next-generation defense capabilities. AI-driven Managed Detection and Response can take this challenge head-on.

The Future of Cybersecurity: AI-Driven Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Services

AI-driven MDR cybersecurity services offer a number of benefits over traditional security approaches.

Firstly, they are able to predict when new emerging threats will strike and how to defend against them. To do so, they continuously collect and analyse threat data from both global and local cybersecurity landscapes. They then combine this intelligence with advanced triaging and orchestration tools to fix vulnerabilities that an attacker might exploit.  MDR brings in leading-edge machine learning models with real-time security analytics to develop threat-hunting modules that can also proactively anticipate threat and attackers already in your environment. By combining AI capabilities within an MDR framework, these services can even detect attacks with low digital footprints that might be missed by rule based defense systems (such as SIEM), and add a new critical layer of agility and threat-readiness to today’s cyber defences.

Secondly, when a breach does occur, AI-led MDR services are able to respond much faster—and much more effectively—than traditional security services. For example, our powerful AI platform gives our MDR experts the power to stop attackers and close all points of re-entry swiftly. By delivering increased analytical power, speed, and accuracy, AI-driven defense systems help human security experts plug the gaps in their security architecture before, during, and after an incident occurs.

In India, Paladion is one of the few cyber security vendors that have these capabilities I just highlighted. At Paladion, we combine advanced cognitive systems, automation, high-speed cyber defense protocols, and human experts to deliver next-generation end-to-end threat management, and minimize the business, regulatory, reputational, and customer impacts that cyber-attacks cause.

Our Industry’s New Challenges, and the Need of the Hour

Marc Goodman—the author of “Future Crimes: Everything is Connected, Everyone is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It” and an expert in law enforcement and technology—states an overwhelming majority of cyber-attacks today are automated. With AI being used in new attack methodologies, businesses and cybersecurity professionals have no choice: they must use AI-driven MDR services to handle these incoming known and unknown threats.

AI has quickly become a key element in Managed Detection and Response. It is the new paradigm of cyber security, and has fast become mandatory for any organization that wishes to effectively safeguard their information from unscrupulous actors. India— a nation on a rapid digitisation trajectory—needs to embrace this changing dynamic. There simply is no alternate option available.