India Inc reluctant to spend on security

Excerpts from India Business Hour on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » Nifty BSE | NSE 13/02/12 Are Mutual Funds betting on Nifty?

Here is a verbatim transcript of Maitri Porecha and Gautam Srinivasan's comments on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

 

India Inc's security is under threat. And this might well be because corporates are not willing to spend on security.

 

India Inc's security concerns are being voiced loud and clear in these volatile times. But not much is being done to tackle them - that's as per the latest figures released by International Data Corporation or IDC. They suggest that the security solutions market in India stands at a mere 1.3 percent of the country's total IT budget.

 

This, when globally, upto 8 percent of a company's total IT budget is spent on security.

 

Corroborating this, is the first ever survey on Indian corporate security conducted by Mahindra Special Services. It reveals that 85 percent of Indian business houses agree they are more vulnerable to security threats than, say, three years ago.

 

Mani Mulki, CIO, Godrej Industries, "The corporates are certainly more vulnerable to security threats now, the primary reason being the enormous amount of business data that is getting digitized in the past three to four years. It is always accompanied by risk of it being accessed by unwanted elements and sources. These include risks associated with potential success where organisations want to gain a competitive edge over others through security breach."

 

90 percent of the business houses polled believe they are vulnerable to a new risk -- the lack of competitive intelligence.

 

A competitive intelligence unit looks beyond current strategies, and predicts strategies that future competition may employ.

 

Despite the magnitude of this risk, only 21 percent of India's business houses are equipped to counter it.

 

Raghu Raman, CEO, Mahindra SSG said, "Most corporates have looked at strategy from a very inward basis assumption; usually our strategic moves are very reactive to the elements, which have already happened.  Not very many corporates have the capability to do anything about it, and they are managing with their regular IT vendors for security or managing with audit firms to help them plug the gaps, but the threats are of a totally different magnitude."

 

As far as security threats go, attrition, intellectual property risks and physical risks also rank high. Experts say these concerns exist only because india inc is not willing to spend on security safeguards.