Booming business of cybersecurity
Corporate plans may be in the freezer and the economy in the doldrums, but the one sector that is showing galloping growth is the cybersecurity industry. Relatively new to India, the business of firewalling computers has shown a combined annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40% over the last two years. Revenue from sale of products and services by the cybersecurity industry showed a jump to $9.86 billion, more than doubling from just about $4.3 billion in 2019, a study conducted by the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) showed. Worldwide, the cybersecurity industry is a $156 billion business and is expected to double by 2026. However, its growth at about 14.6% annually is slower than that in India, which is emerging only second to China as a cyber hub.
It is no surprise that the security investment of corporate groups and the government took a leap during the pandemic, as the closure of physical offices forced operations to shift online. As the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) technology connect gadgets and computer systems ‘talk’ to each other, the stakes involved in case of intrusion and data breaches are becoming very high. Last year, we saw the number of cybercrimes—ranging from bank frauds to phishing—almost double to 50,035 from 27,248 complaints reported in 2018.
The good news is that, since the Cosmos Bank got cleaned out of `94 crore in an overnight computer heist in Pune in 2018, cybersecurity is on the boardroom agenda of almost every corporate group; and the talent pool serving the industry has almost doubled to over 2 lakh technicians and engineers since 2019. On the flip side, the government, as the largest purveyor and stockist of information, is not doing enough to safeguard its citizens. This was evident when UIDAI data (Aadhaar) of over 1.1 billion Indians leaked out in 2018 from various government websites. Cybersecurity education and ramping up the talent pool serving the industry is a crying need. The other big question mark, as the Pegasus case has shown, is: Who protects the privacy of ordinary citizens when the ‘snooping’ is by the government?