“In The Context Of India, The Attack Surface Has Greatly Increased”

Nation states have added a new dimension to what is emerging as the newest theatre of war after air, sea, water and space — the Internet. They interfere in other countries' elections, in their power grids, in sports events, and are even alleged to be disabling naval vessels over the cloud to cause accidents. But that’s not the only area where cyber defence needs to be beefed up. Enterprises continue to remain major targets, as do governments, financial institutions and even national identity databases. Business Today’s Rajeev Dubey talks to Greg Clark, CEO of the world’s biggest cyber security firm, Symantec, on how such issues are being dealt with. 

- Rajeev Dubey

On the web, which way is cyber security headed, in terms of the kind of challenges and how industry is dealing with them?

A: What happens when you are adopting cloud is that you may select an infrastructure platform like Amazon or it could be a little telecommunications company and they are providing you data centres. One thing that is important across these outcomes is that you are still responsible for your users and data that the enterprises are custodians of. Users can be employees, customers, guests or partners. You are responsible for their identities, protecting them from inappropriate access, along with the data that the company gets.

Criminals are active. What you see from Petya, WannaCry, some nation states are tampering with elections. So, in terms of the need for what we are doing, we believe it has never been higher. Is your cyber defence budget increasing or shrinking? It’s always increasing. We are fortunate to be the leading provider in this area. Regarding adversaries, when we find a way to stop an attack, they find another way. In the context of India, with the advent of digital currency and digitalisation of the economy, the attack surface has greatly increased and the criminals are very active.

What’s the nature and volume of attacks in cyberspace? How have they been accelerating over time?