IT decision makers from leading Indian companies will be focusing on cyber security and data-backed decision making, as their key priority areas in 2022. Coming in the backdrop of a pandemic situation, businesses the world over have had to take a fresh look at the way they do business.
With social distancing norms, remote working, frequent lockdowns, behaviour patterns of end-consumers are undergoing a change of sorts. Digital transactions and work from home are the new normal. CIOs and IT decision makers that W.Media spoke to have outlined certain key areas out of which cybersecurity and digital transformation seem to be the most important ones.
In the year 2022 IT decision makers will continue to focus on data and security for growing their business. Apart from these other technologies like AI, IoT and 5G will continue gaining focus.
The importance of AI in organisations
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the holy grail of every organisation, as it tries to better understand its customer. This is especially the case post COVID-19, as user behaviour has undergone a change and is continuing to evolve. Businesses, especially financial institutions are going through the most interesting transformation seen in recent times. This has been powered by AI, amongst other technologies.
“I think Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, 5G technology, cloud services, and cybersecurity are some applications which will find a prominent place in most business processes & industries. For the BFSI sector digitisation has played an important role in all the lockdowns & restrictions,” said Vivek Dharia CIO, KNP Securities Pvt. Ltd.
He further added that despite the ongoing Omicron scare in India, the company’s IT spending is projected to an increase of 3.8 per cent from the previous year. The company is accelerating its long-term digital initiatives.
Cybersecurity challenges during COVID-19
During the COVID-19 pandemic with a work from home situation and vulnerabilities various organisations had witnessed cybersecurity related incidents which has made them more focused towards strengthening the cybersecurity related areas of the organisation in order to avoid data breach incidents.
“We plan to increase cybersecurity spending and increase business intelligence and cloud platform investments as well,” Dharia added.
He further explained that it is no surprise that the pandemic has pushed CIO’s to accelerate their digital transformation journeys & make hybrid work models with remote areas in real time mode. Finance and sustainability are expected to go hand in hand in the short run.
Till date over 720 million Indians have been tested for COVID-19 and the government of India is highly relying on the latest technologies for spreading awareness about COVID19 and vaccination drives.
The latest technologies are being adopted by various organisations of different sectors in order to accelerate their process of digital transformation. But this also comes with various cybersecurity issues which are important for companies to address.
Personal data of thousands of people in India had been leaked from a government server which includes their name, mobile number, address and COVID test result, and the information can be accessed through online search.
The leaked data has been put on sale on Raid Forums website where a cyber criminal claims to have personal data of over 20,000 people. The data put on Raid Forums shows name, age, gender, mobile number, address, date and result of COVID19 report of these people, according to media reports.
