Through this latest edition of Insights Success, we wish to feature organizations that are quite adept in utilizing and adopting these tech-trends in their operations. ‘The 5 Most Trusted Cyber Security Companies to Watch,’ is an edition which will take you on a journey towards the digital security space. So, give it a read and enjoy articles curated by our in-house editorial team.
The 5 most trusted cyber security companies to watch.
1. 2021 VOL. 01 ISSUE 02
M O S T T R U S T E D
C O M P A N I E S T O W A T C H
CYBER
SECURITY
5
T H E
CYBER
CYBER
5
A Specialist for Cybersecurity
Product Companies
2.
3.
4. Editor’s Note
he cyber security space has observed a
Ttremendous growth worldwide. With the advent
of Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for cyber
security services and solutions have skyrocketed given
it has become the need of the hour today. As every
organization during the lockdown period was made
compulsory to push its employees to work from home,
cyber security emerged as one of the crucial elements
to consider in order to stay safe from data theft and
hacking.
To safeguard against the threats that have gone digital
as well along with the business processes, advanced
cyber security solutions have come out as the only
reliable option. It has been established that various
business process has adapted digitization and so their
exposure to various cybercrimes have increased a lot as
a result. Hence, it would not be wrong to say that cyber
security is going to play a crucial role in the coming
days, even after the pandemic is over. With great
prospectus ahead, the cyber security space globally has
observed some great innovations taking place.
Innovation in this space is proving to be the building
blocks for what the next generation of cyber security
solutions would look like. When we talk about
innovation, we just not mean the new ideas in the cyber
security solutions, technological adaptations in the
industry also plays a crucial role. Let us take a look at
the trending technological advancements that are on
its way to revolutionize the cyber security space
dynamically:
1. 5G – It is predicted that 5G is going to enhance
connectivity and security risks both. The increased
adoption of global promotion of 5G technology is
going to push businesses in undertaking unsecured
infrastructure to keep up with its dynamics. This
will result in businesses relying on under-skilled
labour to protect it which could trigger various
major 5G oriented security threat incidents. The
data converging through 5G networks could be like
browsing on social media platforms. Harmless,
right? One might think so! Yet, it could also mean or
contain sensitive information and even critical
busines analytics that can be traced and even
harnessed unethically. It would not be wrong to say
that securing huge amount of continuous
information transfers will need substantial efforts
in safeguarding large quantity of data flow. 5G is
great from a user’s perspective. It dilutes the fact
that many people would be able to access huge files
across global wireless networks in more areas with
low latency and less performance impact.
2. Real-time Detection – It helps in tackling new
security threats. Outpacing legacy systems,
detection-centric cybersecurity solutions are on
the way of becoming new norms and replace
TOP TECH TRENDS
IN THE CYBER
SECURITY SPACE
5. traditional security processes with detection-
focused tools powered by automated remediation
technologies. In detection technology, things that
are driving an evolution are emerging threats and a
shared security responsibility between cloud
service providers and businesses. Cloud service
providers are responsible for securing on-premises
infrastructure, networking, computing, and other
necessities that assists the cloud. On the other
hand, customers need to secure everything in the
cloud. New threats are introducing investment into
detection technologies. Advancements prevailing
in social engineering and malware due to machine
learning makes it very hard to determine threats as
and when they are delivered which complicates the
maintenance of threat data as it is continuously
evolving. Fortunately, new solutions are coming up
to tackle these new challenges and threats. These
solutions prioritize visibility, automation, and
orchestration to immediately identify and organize
the resolution of attacks as they emerge in real
time.
3. Unified Cloud Security Platforms – These
platforms are enabling a multi-cloud future. All
modern businesses are derived virtually and
depended on multi-cloud environments. It is said
that the virtual business models and their security
will move from a management-focused operational
focus to factors relying on unified visibility and
automation across their concerned clouds. This
particular shared responsibility of security adds a
necessity for visibility and detection. Companies
are observing an increasing need to consolidate
cloud management as they operate hybrid and
multi-cloud environments. Unified management
and enhanced visibility allow companies to
visualize configurations across clouds and
networks. This surmounts to easy identification
and remediate misconfigurations of networks
before they create a ruckus.
The cybersecurity space is one of the most
continuously discussed and evolving areas in the
technology domain. As the protectors of a business,
security personnel must comprehensively update their
security tools and processes to remain upfront with the
threat factors. As organizations welcome the digital
transformation and adapt to a globally interconnected
world, security must stay a priority.
Through this latest edition of Insights Success, we wish
to feature organizations that are quite adept in utilizing
and adopting these tech-trends in their operations.
‘The 5 Most Trusted Cyber Security Companies to
Watch,’ is an edition which will take you on a journey
towards the digital security space. So, give it a read and
enjoy articles curated by our in-house editorial team.
Darshan Parmar
Managing Editor
DarsHP
darshan@insightssuccess.com
7. 20
ORRTUS TECHNOLOGIES
INNOVATING EDUCATION WITH BLOCKCHAIN
ARTICLES
Cyber Law Insights
Dynamics of Cyber
Laws in Business
16
Cyber Security Decoded
Overview of Indian Cyber
Security Space
28
24
CYBER SECURITY INSIGHTS
DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
& CYBER SECURITY
CXO
10. Management Brief
Company Name
Khalid Isar
Founder and CEO
Sacumen
Dr. Samad M Waseem
Director
Wattlecorp Cybersecurity
Labs LLP
Zuhair E
CEO
Digipeddle Technologies
Orrtus Technologies
iTech Ecommerce
Nitesh Sinha,
Founder and CEO,
Subhashish Lahiri,
Director of Product
Engineering,
Praneeth Kudithipudi
Vice President of
Sales and Marketing
Gaurav has more than five years of professional and
entrepreneurial experience in leading Digipeddle Technologies
Khalid is a keen strategist and responsible for driving iTech
Ecommerce's local growth.
Dr. Samad is leading Orrtus Technologies, an innovative
company that envisions to fill gaps in the education and
healthcare sectors using blockchain.
The trio is leading Sacumen, a company that has been at the
forefront of working with Security Product Companies to
address their challenges dynamically.
Founded in 2018, Wattlecorp is one of the leading cybersecurity
companies in India.
Gaurav Nikam
Founder and CEO
5
THE MOST TRUSTED
SECURITY COMPANIES TO WATCH
CYBER
11.
12. A Specialist for Cybersecurity Product Companies
People are always finding new ways to hack
computers and systems. Cybersecurity threats are
increasing daily. This industry vertical, particularly,
has kept many people on their toes, as there are always new
ways to learn, different innovations to look for, solving
dynamic problems of the industry, the crackdown on a new
cyber threat, and much more. The industry has urged to
satiate its demand for building better security solutions and
address various challenges that come with it.
The term Connector means a thing that links two or more
things together. Security Product Companies have faced a
continuous challenge to keep pace in building integrations
to newer 3rd party products as well as support the existing
integration Connectors. On an average, each Security
Product Company needs to build 150-200 Connectors
which help to enhance the capabilities of their products.
Sacumen has been at the forefront of working with
Security Product Companies to address these challenges.
Sacumen has built 750+ Connectors in the areas of SIEM,
IAM, Ticketing Systems, Incident Response, Cloud
Applications, Cloud Monitoring, Threat Intelligence Feed,
Endpoint Security, Cloud Storage, DevOps, GRC, Vulnera-
bility Management, Authentication, etc. Sacumen also has 2
Solutions in Connectors space. The first one is called DaaS
(Data Collector as a Service) and the second one is CaaS
(Connector as a service). Sacumen had witnessed more than
100% growth year on year over the past few years. This
growth has further accelerated during the pandemic with
Sacumen looking to double its workforce in the next 6
months.
Nitesh Sinha
Founder and CEO
www.insightssuccess.in
10 | January 2021
13. A Global Security Execution Partner
The foundation of Sacumen is built on the philosophy of
being a niche player in the cybersecurity market and solve
critical problems for Security product companies.
“Sacumen was born to address the pressing needs of
Security Product Companies looking for a trusted, focused
and niche Security services partner to help them develop
innovative Security Products and solutions so that they can
stay ahead of the curve given the ever-evolving security
challenges and stay relevant in a competitive market and
ever-changing business dynamics and threat landscape.”
says the team of Sacumen.
“We realized that building and maintaining Third-party
integrations or Connectors are so-called ‘necessary evil’
for a security product company to make their product
usable and sellable. We decided to solve this problem and
have been Laser focussed on our approach. This has helped
us build a strong differentiator for ourselves in the market
and leading to our exponential growth. All our customers
currently are only Cybersecurity product companies!” says
Nitesh Sinha, Founder and CEO of Sacumen.
The company develops the ‘plumbing’ as Subhashish
Lahiri, Director of Product Engineering at Sacumen likes
to call it, to ensure that all the security product companies
can do not just the defensive approach through analysis but
also take an offensive approach in mitigating Threats by
building orchestration solutions in real-time.
What makes Sacumen a premier cybersecurity company is
not only its development skills but also the know-how of
how the 3rd party products work and the Use cases of the
various categories in Cybersecurity while building these
Connectors. One of the key differentiators that Sacumen
brings to the table is its partner ecosystem. The company
has built more than 165+ partnerships to date. Finally, the
company’s undivided focus is the key to help product
companies reach the market faster. It is one of the crucial
factors that help in extending client satisfaction.
“People are looking for what you can do beyond what they
ask for. That is where the silver lining lies, I would say,”
conveys Praneeth Kudithipudi, Vice President of Sales
and Marketing at Sacumen.
Subhashish Lahiri
Director of Product Engineering
Security is like a ‘Titanic
Syndrome’. No one
thinks ‘it’ will ever go
down, but you never
know how close you
are to that Iceberg.
Unravelling Cybersecurity
www.insightssuccess.in January 2021 | 11
14. LIFE AT SACUMEN
Cyber Security
Innovation
Ownership Fun
Impact
Team
work
Product Engineering
Connectors
www.insightssuccess.in
12 | January 2021
15. Dynamics of Sacumen and the Trio
“We want to be known as the Powerhouse for Connectors,”
says the Sacumen team. That is the trio’s focus, and they are
not going to dwindle from it. Sacumen was founded by
Nitesh in 2015 and funded by an angel investor called
Clarion Venture Partners. Praneeth joined the company 2
years later to help build Sales & Marketing teams from the
ground up. Subhashish joined in 2019 to help strengthen the
delivery process and run the core engine of Sacumen
effectively which would enable Sacumen to grow much
faster and increase customer satisfaction.
Nitesh carries more than 18 years of experience in the
Cybersecurity space and is a security evangelist. Nitesh
drives the company and product vision. Praneeth, with his
impeccable experience in growing Sales and understanding
of customer requirements, serves as Client Champion to
ensure that the desired outcome is met. Subhashish, with his
proven experience in Delivery, works on improving
delivery processes to ensure that the solutions are delivered
with top quality. Trio’s skills and strength complement each
other and that is helping Sacumen to go a fast pace of
growth.
“We don’t like monotonous work, that’s why we like to
challenge ourselves every day. Cybersecurity space throws
those challenges and that is what makes it an exciting space
to be in” states Nitesh. Sacumen team would like to leave a
legacy where he and his team builds a world-class services
company that is known to solve complex problems in the
Cybersecurity space.
He describes the five pillars of culture that Sacumen has:
1. Ownership – Everyone owns their tasks. We do not
believe in micro-management. We are looking to
build leaders.
2. Impact – Impact through Innovation. Challenge
the status quo and figure out ways to make things
better.
3. Teamwork – Build a workplace where team
members support each other and work towards a
common goal.
4. Customer Delight – Delight the customer through
delivering solutions that enable them to exceed
their targets and achieve their goals.
5. Fairness – Be fair in all our dealings with
various stakeholders (employees, investors,
clients, vendors).
The pandemic has led Sacumen to help clients in
strengthening their existing connectors and add value to
their product engineering space while supporting them
completely. “As a company, Sacumen has grown to
50-60% since mid-March and April and now is on a
rising graph,” shares Praneeth. “As we are growing very
fast, we are also looking to make our processes robust
and scalable to keep delivering Enterprise-scale reliable
Connectors for our customers” the trio concludes.
Praneeth Kudithipudi
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
www.insightssuccess.in January 2021 | 13
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www.insightssuccess.in
19. DYNAMICS
LAWS
BUSINESS
OF
CYBER
IN
Year 2019, a year before the
pandemic was the perfect year
when things were going well
for the global economy without a speck
in the horizon to indicate what was to
come next. In this ‘happy year’,
unhappiness was brought not by a
pandemic of any kind but by
cybercrime. As per an independent
report, organizations, including those
under government rule, and individuals
together lost a whopping USD 3.5
billion-plus to cybercrimes. In the US
along a mind-numbing 450,000+
complaints were registered with the
FBI with respect to cybercrimes
If this is any indication, the field of
crime in cyber-space is wide open for
those who think they can get away
with it. Many in fact do get away due
to either opaque and unclear laws or
the inability of the policing system to
bring criminals to book. What has thus
been increasingly felt the world over is
the need for Cyber Laws in each
country, and region which controls and
subjugates this menace the moment it
rears its head.
On why a cyber law for business?
Simple. Because in the making of a
law, certain pertinent issues get
resolved including:
- What constitutes a cyber-crime?
Crimes could be crimes of passion,
those pre-meditated, inadvertent, in
the line of a duty and so on. Cyber-
crime laws for business describe
clearly which crimes fall within the
ambit of cyber-crimes. Sometimes
it may seem like a cyber-crime but,
could be outside it is ambit. A clear
definition is thus important.
www.insightssuccess.in January 2021 | 17
20. - Who can be designated a cyber-
criminal? The next thing the law
does is to describe in complete
details who constitutes a cyber-
criminal. Over-simplifiers may say
that the one who commits a cyber-
crime is a cybercriminal which could
be far from true in cases where one
has committed an act inadvertently
or done something in good faith but
whose results turned out to be
criminal as per the law. The person’s
age, qualifications, acts, thought
process etc all go into defining who
could be a cyber-criminal as per law.
- Bodies which can sit in judgement
and adjudicate. It is finally up to
the law to define who or which
body sits in adjudication as also
detail out those bodies which can
contravene the adjudications of the
first body, besides quoting the
reason for the same. The world of
courts and judgements is not as
simple and straight as one would
want. The reason for the same is
that not all judicial bodies are
equipped enough to handle cases
and come to correct conclusions.
There are courts that take care of all
manner of complaints and issues;
and then there are those that take
care of very specific and special
kinds of cases, and whose
judgement can either be challenged
only in specific courts or cannot be
challenged at all.
- Definitions. Nothing in the world of
laws move without a proper and
(fairly) clear definition. Cyber laws
define each pertinent section and
part down to words such that
adjudication becomes easy and
simple.
- Penal provisions. The last and most
important section of any law,
cyberworld-related or otherwise is
the clear definition of penalties in
the event of contraventions which
could include incarcerations,
financial penalties, attaching
properties and so on.
Coming back to the same question,
why are cyber laws needed for
businesses? The internet is a universe
where one can hide behind myriad tech
inventions and launch attacks on
unsuspecting victims for various
reasons and outcomes. Of these,
businesses are especially vulnerable
with the usual forms of cyber-crimes
mentioned as follows:
- Online abuse and spreading false
and fake information, especially on
social media with wrong intent to
defame an organization or insight
violence and hate.
- Hacking into corporate websites
and networks and remotely
operating them without users
knowing about it.
- Hacking and pilfering data
including prized products and
service details that come under
intellectual property.
- Using ransomware to hijack and
shutdown websites and cyber-
properties with an intent to
blackmail.
- Phishing. Using fake email
messages to get personal
information from internet users or
making fake websites to fool
browsers into giving personal
information.
- Other forms of identity thefts
(other than phishing)
- Denial of service attacks where
sites and systems are intentionally
flooded with with engineered traffic
to overwhelm the former so that
they do not respond to genuine
requests besides causing a crash.
Now for some statistics:
- Bromium and McGuire’s
“conservative” estimates about
cybercrime earning pegs it at a
whopping USD $1.5 trillion in
2018- more than the GDP of Korea
and Australia!
- Cybercrimes that originate on social
media generates over USD 3.25
billion revenues every year.
- Sale of personal data on dark-web
that find their origins in social-
media is valued close to USD 630
million every year.
- Records pilfered online thru data
breaches in the first 6 months of
2019 is pegged over 4 billion!
- A report by Accenture in 2019 about
phishing and social engineering
mentions that close to 85%
organizations have experience the
same and that the volume of attacks
have gone beyond 15% YOY! The
same report quotes the figure of
losses due to malware being above
USD 2 million in 2018.
From the above, it is clear that
worldwide, there is an urgent need for
cyber laws that have teeth. Technology
in the cyberspace moves with the speed
of light and needs responses which
remain just as fast if not faster. One
way could be with the use of AI-based
system that with the backing of ML
and big-data continually scans the
horizon to decipher and pick out
patterns and incidents which could
indicate to an attack in the making or
an imminent attack.
- Purushottam
www.insightssuccess.in
12 | January 2021 www.insightssuccess.in
18 | January 2021
21.
22. Orrtus Technologies
Innovating Education with Blockchain
C
ompanies – both established and start-ups –
have been using the new and exciting
Blochain technology to solve a multitude of
issues that plague different sectors. One innovative
company that envisions to fill in the gaps in the
education and healthcare sectors using blockchain is
Orrtus Technologies.
Orrtus Technologies Pvt. Ltd. is a Bengaluru-based
software and R&D firm, promoted by leaders present
in the international market. Equipped with state-of-
the-art infrastructure and dedicated professionals
working around the clock, Orrtus brings you ‘quality
of performance’.
Orrtus is steadfast and optimally efficient in its
operations and the company believes that technology
should supplement and extend your business
operations, without complexity and costs.
The main focus of Orrtus is of utilising the potential
of blockchain in projects and go global with the
solutions. The current pandemic may have delayed the
program, but the team is positive about getting back
on track and go global.
To gain further insights into the operations and the
journey of Orrtus, we conducted an interview with Dr.
Samad M Waseem, the Director of Orrtus Tech, who
founded the company in the year 2018.
So, without further ado, let us dive right into the
interview and relish the knowledge we are about to
receive.
Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a
regular 9am-5pm job?
It was too monotonous, following the same routine. It
has always excited me to explore new challenges and
endless opportunities.
Tell us more about your
company/startup/organization.
Our company is mainly focused on education sector.
We started with the traditional line of business. Later,
we identified the gaps which we are catering to. Our
Blockchain and AI solutions are tailored for the
industry – to verify the credentials and conduct
classes, examinations, and issue validated certificates.
What challenges have you faced as an
entrepreneur? How did you overcome them to
establish yourself and the company?
The biggest challenge today being an entrepreneur is
that you are on your own till your hard work is
proved. It is strenuous for people around you to
believe in the concept. For us, we were blessed with a
team who is a part of me in my past endeavour who
supported me and are still standing by me. Every
day comes with a new surprising challenge we go with
the flow to identify the source and solve it so that we
do not encounter the issue again.
How do you lead your company and help it sustain
in a competitive environment?
We strictly follow the concept of “TEAM-players”.
We do not consider any one as a leader or as a worker.
www.insightssuccess.in
20 | January 2021
23. Having everyone involved in our day-to-day
routines with minimum in-house competition
has led to maximum achievements. We have
actually felt the change in the behaviour of
our team which is achieving their goals and
producing the best of outputs.
Personally, I have had experience with few
failures before, which has taught us the real
lesson which academia did not teach. We do
not want to repeat the same mistake we did
earlier.
What is that one aspect or emotion that
drives you at work or keeps you
motivated?
The thrill to achieve new heights and the
feeling of doing what I always want to do.
As a business leader, what is your opinion
on the current landscape of business, given
that the pandemic has been adversely
affecting every industry?
This Pandemic has made few people and
destroyed a lot of people. My opinion would
be for people to safe guard themselves as
much as possible first. Then in term of
business, it’s always safe to look into
emerging businesses. Now since the markets
are opening, the growth and opportunities are
endless. Its like the world is beginning afresh.
Social Media is an inseparable part of the
daily life of youth. Your thoughts about it
and how do you leverage its power for the
company?
Social media definitely plays a very important
part in every business and personal life. Our
key strategist has planned and implemented a
digital way to reach the institutions and the
masses.
What are your future endeavours/objectives and
where do you see yourself in near future?
We have plans of venturing into e-commerce, airlines,
the opportunities are endless as everything today is
moving to traceability, reliability and transparency. So
our solution has the edge and can cater to these vacuums
Dr. Samad M Waseem
Director
3The 5 Most Trusted Cyber Security Companies to Watch
www.insightssuccess.in January 2021 | 21
24.
25.
26. DYNAMICS OF
SOCIAL MEDIA
AND
Cyber Security
About the Author –
Mr. Gaurav Nikam, Founder and CEO
of Digipeddle Technologies
Gaurav has more than five years of
professional and entrepreneurial
experience. He is a professional with
demonstrated history of operating in
IT and services industry. He has strong
business development acumen, and
he is skilled in Account Management,
Solution selling. Presales and Project
Management.
www.insightssuccess.in
24 | January 2021
27. Mr. Gaurav Nikam
Founder and CEO
CYBER SECURITY INSIGHTS
www.insightssuccess.in January 2021 | 25
28. s a digital media marketing firm, we are heavy user
Aof social media networking sites, they have
applications in web-based businesses, interpersonal
interactions and can be effectively utilized for
advertisements. The online media gives a superior stage to
organizations to draw in more clients.
With the proliferation of social networking sites and the
people connected to it there are many opportunities and
threats arising from it. Some organizations developed it as a
business opportunity; some of them brought concerns
related to the privacy and security of the users.
As the development of social media network has brought
different advantages, it likewise has brought different
security concerns. Some potential risks are as follows:
• The assailants can abuse your data very easily. One can
easily misuse your identity with the data given on
social networking sites.
• Some outsiders (third party) applications look for
consent from the social media user to get to individual
data for all the different games and applications. Every
social media user must concede the application or a
game and a specific degree of consent only if it is
necessary.
• Although all the social networking sites have very
strong data privacy policies, user must be aware that
whenever he posts or communicate something on
social media, the data is accessible with the systems
administrators. The administrators can save account
information even after erasure.
• Viruses and malware frequently discover their direction
onto user’s PC through those phoney promotions. The
assailant can access or take secret information by
spreading spam sends and phishing attacks might
happen.
• User must take into consideration legal issues that can
happen if one posts something that is hostile to any
individual or network or nation. There are lawful
dangers related to it.
• It might cause actual security worries for the user, as
the outsiders may get to the wandering data of the user
by gathering the continuous update on the user's area.
Kaspersky Lab's insights uncovered that the fraudsters
mirroring Facebook client's records for almost 22% of
phishing assaults in 2014. As indicated by Kaspersky Lab,
phishing is a significant danger in Russia and Europe as the
number of assaults has expanded in this district, up 18% to
36.3 million assaults in Q3 2015 as contrasted and a similar
timeframe a year ago.
Though social media and cyber security may not have seen
as having the same roots, but they can complement each
other. In essence to make best out of social media the users
must be aware about the proper habits to use social media
or else one will always have threats from eavesdropper,
phishing and scammers and impersonators. And in turn to
make more and more awareness about cyber security in all,
we have social media as a best mechanism to reach and
guide.
Amid all this WhatsApp’s new privacy policy talks about
sharing the data with their parent Facebook. Some users
already have the privacy policy notifications and there are
concerns over its new privacy policy, which will be in place
from February 2021. The policy is invasive and will hugely
compromise user privacy. By sharing most of user’s data
with Facebook, WhatsApp will enable Facebook to mine
and sell that data. The implications of this are far-reaching.
WhatsApp will share all the data it possesses with
Facebook and companies such as Instagram, which will be
used to target ads effectively. Here is an example that
illustrate how this information could potentially be used,
WhatsApp can sell data about persons phone battery level
to Uber or Ola who can then use this data to charge a higher
price for their rides when a person’s battery is dying.
Another E.g., WhatsApp knows that a user walks from train
station to the office every day at a certain time allowing
them to serve that user with advertisements for a coffee
shop within the certain radius of that journey.
This is the era of Big Data Analytics. Data is the new oil.
Data is the power, and it is going to be one of the crucial
elements in the fight against data theft and pro cyber
security concerns.
www.insightssuccess.in
26 | January 2021
31. Cyber Security Decoded
t is not anything new that India is
Ithe world’s third-largest economy
by purchasing power parity, ahead
of even the likes of Japan. With an
ambition to double its GDP from the
present USD 2.59 trillion, Indian
industry is poised to grow at
unprecedented speeds. While this is all
good for the country and the world,
what worries experts is the fact that
paralleling this increase in GDP which
otherwise spreads cheers, is an equal
rise in cyber-crimes and data-security
breaches including incidents of
ransomware, phishing, and outright
data theft. One of the main reasons
behind the ease with which people plan
Cyber-attacks of any magnitude is the
easy availability of quality data from
varied sources, refined by the same set
of systems and software that we use to
make the right decisions. Yes, AI, Big
Data, Analytics, NLP, and anything
that industry and otherwise use to
sharpen their analytical claws to go for
the perfect kill, could be used by the
dark side to do harm of equal
magnitude and extent.
Before moving ahead, let us take stock
of the likely cyber security issues that
may arise in the future, near or
otherwise.
- Data leaks from non-traditional
sources including voice-activated
systems.
If you think the harmless voice-
activated TV or FM radio is only
providing music and entertainment,
you could be very wrong. With
their numbers growing
exponentially, and all manner of
verbal communication taking place
in offices and homes, it is just a
question of time before someone
inserts an inconspicuous, innocuous
app in the system which listens in
on all the conversations and reports
the same back to the wrong set of
people. With plenty of data of the
right kinds, the attacker can, using
any AI-backed system engineer an
attack whose effects may be
humongous though not immediately
felt.
- IoT-based devices
It is nice to know that two devices
speak among themselves and are
doing away with the irritating, slow
and sluggish human interface.
Things thus speedup for everyone.
Including the villains. All it needs is
the one small software leak or bug.
With zero or reduced human
intervention, the chances of the bug
getting caught and crushed reduces,
given that the latter also has built-in
features to camouflage and deflect
identities to fool any attempts to
eradicate or minimise their effects.
- Misuse of AI to gather accurate
information.
Technology is a dual-edged sword
which in the right hands can do
wonders and blunders and bloopers
if it goes to the wrong set of people.
With the stakes getting higher each
www.insightssuccess.in January 2021 | 29
32. day in the run to get the right set of
information, there is no reason that the
best systems that the right guys use
cannot go to those of thieves and
cyber-robbers.
- Remote accesses attacks
A malicious action by a network on
another while not itself being
affected in any material ways, it
employs weaknesses in the latter
network to launch an attack with
the intent to steal data, introduce
malicious matters including
software, and plainly cause damage
to the targeted network. Its form
include:
• Domain Name System (DNS)
Poisoning to misguide browsers
to malicious websites.
• Transmission Control Protocol
(TCP) desynchronization: Packets
of data get switched with wrong
ones for attacker to get into a
system.
• Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks:
Maliciously flooding a network
with false requests to leet the
latter preoccupied.
• Internet Control Message
Protocol: Error message systems
of computer network gets
hijacked by attacker to mount an
attack.
• Port Scanning: Ports open and
close to send and receive data.
This process can be used by
hijackers to send in malicious
matter.
- Newer forms of phishing
including kitting of sophisticated
phishing software:
Nothing less than 4 malwares get
created every second with the sites
remaining alive ONLY for a few
hours. This has caused considerable
loss of trust in sites with only 65%
of URLs thus considered
trustworthy these days. This puts
enormous burden and restricts
genuine businesses from
advertising their presence online.
This state shall only get worse with
newer forms of phishing being
available on the more secretive part
of the internet, the dark web.
Worse, phishing is now a
commoditized activity where folks
can buy relevant software on the
dark web for as low as USD 20 to
50! Entire look-alike websites of
famous brands can be made using
malicious software which also
inform about the best ways of
scamming people by cloning
payment systems!
- Smartphone-based attacks
PCs are passe these days when it
comes to malicious cyber-attacks
because action has shifted to the
ubiquitous mobile phone which are
the mainstay these days when it is
about browsing with over 60%
online frauds taking place through
mobile phones. Of these, close to
80% are the handiwork of
malicious apps and NOT web-based
browsers. The latter has its own
issues of phishing though most
folks still think apps are harmless.
Well, they are not. As for the reason
behind the newfound love for
mobile frauds, it is due to their
being far more vulnerable as users
these days do financial transactions
on the go while being outside the
confines of their homes where most
firewalls are strongest. With two-
factor authentication being the
norm, incidences of mobiles being
stolen are also on the rise.
According to a report by PWV, India’s
cyber security market which in 2019
was worth USD 1.97 billion shall grow
to USD 3.05 billion by 2022, a
compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
of 15.6%—almost one and a half times
the global rate. The report further states
that the cyber security industry’s
growth rates is higher than for services.
Factors which contribute to its
phenomenal growth include a
preference to digitization and
consequent data consumption means
the field under attack has gone up
exponentially which necessitates
putting across the latest defending
systems at every touchpoint. More
interconnectivity between gadgets
these days means there are invariable
loopholes for cyberattacks and
breaches. And lastly, institutional
systems within the country while
taking cognisance of evolving risks,
are forming guidelines and directives
for industry to adhere to.
An interesting development in the
Indian Cyber Security space as per the
PWC report is the development and
growth of Cyber Security Services at
whose core are activities including
incident response and security testing
services besides security strategies,
policy development and security
architecture. These are expected to
grow at a CAGR of 12 % for over 3
years to with a worth of USD 157
million by 2022.
- Purushottam
www.insightssuccess.in
30 | January 2021
