Majority of Indian Enterprises Accelerated Investment Around Cyber Security in 2020: A10 Networks Study
2020 has been a challenging year for everyone, COVID-19 has turned everything upside-down and is still creating havoc around the globe. COVID-19 has had a significant impact on communications service providers in India and globally. The pandemic is continuously evolving and presenting new challenges for IT professionals across sectors, with employees working from home. A10 Networks commissioned an independent research organisation, Opinion Matters, to conduct a research study in order to understand the issues facing communications service providers when it comes to the lasting impact that COVID-19 has had on their subscribers and enterprises. 1,251 senior IT professionals from a range of communications service providers including: mobile, fixed-line telecom, cable, converged, MVNO and MVNA and OTT providers, were surveyed across five countries: UK, France, Germany, Middle East and India.
The study titled International Communications Service Providers Insights 2021 examines communications service providers’ plans for investment, adoption of new technologies, and complexity of operating in the current hybrid environment, as they respond to the ongoing impact of COVID-19. It identifies trends in demand and usage patterns, expectations around security and resiliency in what has been an unprecedented year. The study also reveals how communications service providers will adapt to a post-COVID-19 world, and the challenges they face with a more distributed workplace.
The need for cyber security in this digital age has increased to great extent as subscribers and enterprises are more vigilant and careful about securing their data in this day and age. As per the A10 Networks survey, communication service providers (CSPs) have been one of the biggest victims of cyberattacks owing to the evolving threat landscape. Because of this, CSPs have had to step up in areas such as the infrastructure around the network, having them in specific high-demand locations and investing more on security technology. This has also led to an increased demand by the customers for online platforms and has amplified customer’s concerns around business continuity and resilience.
Top findings of the report reveal that:
Distributed Environment is Leading to a Broader Attack Surface
Owing to the pandemic, CSPs need to move to a more distributed environment. A distributed environment increases the risk of cyberattacks and therefore CSPs are looking into better and stronger security for their data. A large percent of CSPs have invested in security technology to deal with the distributed environment.
COVID-19 has had a Significant Impact on Relationships and Investment Plans
In terms of investment plans, CSPs landed into three categories: some of the investment plans accelerated especially around security, some moved to public clouds, and some put their investment plans on a halt. Providers are now eager to remove service interruption and downtime, hence, the priority is now security investments focused on installing firewalls and security appliances.
DDoS Protection is a Key Initiative
DDoS protection is a priority to almost all CSPs. With the expanded threat environment, DDoS mitigation and network infrastructure are considered critical. The Indian market has shown the most investment in this field. Jeopardizing data is something CSPs have been trying to avoid during the pandemic and beyond.
The Workplace will not Snap Back to How it Was
The report showed how a majority of Indian enterprises believe that customers will continue to operate in a hybrid environment post pandemic, giving more reasons why security of data is of utmost importance.
Since most firms in India have seen a rise in cyberattacks during the pandemic and given the considerable shift in consumption demands, Indian enterprises witnessed the highest acceleration in investments in security and networks. The Indian market has considered security as the primary objective and therefore the demand for cyber security here is very high as compared to the other countries. As Indian organizations continue to restructure their businesses following the pandemic, there is a heightened demand to increase investment in public cloud providers and they are looking at revising employee cyber security training programs to reflect the new hybrid working environment.
The report gives an in depth understanding of how things have changed due to the pandemic and examines all the above points in full detail and statistics. It also contains analysis of variations between the individual countries surveyed and vertical sectors. To know more, download the full report here.