'Cyber attacks chip off Rs 59 lakh from Indian cos' revenues in 2009'

NEW DELHI: Indian companies lost around Rs 58.6 lakh in revenues in 2009 due to cyber attacks, security software maker Symantec has said. In addition to this, Indian enterprises also lost an average of Rs 94.6 lakh in data related to organisation, customer and employee in 2009, while they lost an average of Rs 84.6 lakh in productivity (factors leading to hampering of work like problem with servers), according to Symantec 2010 State of Enterprise Security Study.

"In today’s competitive business scenario, loss of confidential data is a matter of huge concern for any organisation as it directly affects the business as well its reputation and credibility. They need to manage risk proactively, protecting not just the infrastructure that data resides in, but also the information itself," Symantec director (systems engineering) Anand Naik said.

With Gartner predicting that total data centre capacity in India would grow at 31% to reach 5.1 million square feet by 2012, data security is a concern.

“Protecting information today is the key to a business’ ability to grow and thrive. A large percentage of organisations are deploying data loss prevention and end-point protection in order to overcome data and system loss,” he said. The study found that more than 50% of the enterprises surveyed planned to implement significant changes to their data centres in 2010.

"Server virtualisation, storage resource management, continuous data protection, backup and recovery, and security are the key initiatives expected to be in focus in 2010," it said. "Organisations need to protect their infrastructure by securing their endpoints, messaging and web environments," he said.