Hackers coming for Indian firms as fintech rises

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Anil Valluri, managing director of India & SAARC, Palo Alto Networks, India, said the world’s most populous nation saw a 75% increase in cybersecurity budget allocation for 2023 compared with the previous year, marking it one of the highest increases in the APAC region.

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However, it also experienced the highest number of disruptive cyber attacks, Valluri said, speaking to ET on the sidelines of the launch of Palo Alto’s The State of Cybersecurity 2023 report for India.
“India is among the top five most targeted countries globally. Within Japan and APAC, it is the second most targeted country,” said Valluri. “The report overwhelmingly says that India is feeling the heat across industries and transportation, banking, governments, enterprises and manufacturing segments among others,” he added.

The report found that 66% of Indian manufacturing firms faced increased risks from unsecured IoT devices connected to the network, far more than other sectors. Further, 48% of Indian public, transport and logistics organisations and 50% of manufacturing organisations sectors believe 5G adoption will widen security loopholes.
This comes as 69% of transport and logistics companies and 67% of government and essential services have over half of their infrastructure running on the cloud.

He said that the country faces threats from both state actors wanting disruption as well as cyber fraud actors looking to cause economic harm.