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months later, firewalls and virus scanning solutions started creeping inand CIOs started looking out for more comprehensive solutions,” saysGanesan K S, CTO and VP-engineering, Microland. The awarenessand need for a comprehensive security policy started building up onlyafter companies incurred a loss on account of networks beingcompromised. According to a survey conducted by CII and PwC,

around 8 percent of security breaches in India caused a loss in excess of Rs 50,000, anexcess of Rs 5,00,000 in each case in 3 percent of cases. However, the survey admits thatIndian enterprises do not prefer to quantify business losses resulting from securitybreaches. This shows a lack of maturity.

“Indian enterprises have now gone beyond primitive firewall protection. Intrusiondetection systems are now being developed and deployed. The increased number of seminars and workshops by vendors is creating awareness,” says S V Ramana, VP,System Engineering, Cisco. The advent of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) has alsotriggered the need for securing networks. The PwC-CII survey states that 74 percent(respondents) of Indian businesses increased their security budgets while only 6 percentdecreased their security spend in 2000-2001. The survey also adds that 63 percent of corporates have allocated less than Rs 25,00,000 for security, while 5 percent allocated

over Rs 5 crore for strengthening IT security.

The survey also talks about barriers to security amongst enterprises. Capital expenses,complexity of technology, lack of training, time and qualified staff, the rapid pace of change, poorly defined policies, lack of mature tools, group co-operation and managementsupport and labour expenses are the barriers discovered by PwC and CII. “49 percent of Indian corporates attribute capital expense as a barrier to the effective deployment of secure systems, as against 55 percent globally. During 2001, technology related concernslike pace of change of technology, complexity of technology and lack of trainedmanpower were the primary barriers,” says the report.

Ganesan of Microland says the market is now entering into what he calls the ‘third phase’of its lifecycle. “Indian CIOs are now looking at outsourcing security managementprocesses like vulnerability management services. 24/7 monitoring and support is whatthey are seeking.” Microland is offering such services to Blue Dart. “We have a team of 50 security consultants and 22 security operations engineers who are certified by variousproduct vendors like Cisco. In India, we were the first to launch managed securityservices and vulnerability management services,” says Vikram Chandna, productmanager, Microland.

“68 percent of respondents accord a high priority to security, but it is surprising to notethat only 41 percent have a comprehensive security policy document,” says the PwC-CIIsurvey. Risk analysis, classification of business data sets, end user awareness, procedurefor partners and monitoring standards are some of the missing components in the policydocuments of Indian businesses.

Most Indian enterprises still don’t calculate Return on Investment (RoI) when it comes to

investing in network security. Access control, encryption, firewalls, intrusion detectionsystems (IDS), vulnerability assessment tools and virtual private networks (VPN) aresome of the methods being used. Interestingly, around 12 percent of corporates are usingPublic Key Infrastructure (PKI) technologies. “Though PKI will become very critical innon-physical banking, problems in implementing PKI still remain the biggest challenge,”says Milind V Dikshit, head, technology solutions and security, Bangalore Labs.

The Indian manufacturing segment remains ‘not very receptive’ to security. According tothe PwC-CII survey, only 56 percent of them have given high priority to security asagainst the overall Indian average of 68 percent. Surprisingly, around 70 percent of themare using complex and advanced IT applications like ERP and CRM.

Microland's ganesan

feels that companiesare entering a phase

where they are lookingat outsourcing theirsecurity managementprocesses

of 3Network security: Going beyond firewalls - Networking Special- Express Computer India

07-Jan-08http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20020624/network5.shtml

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Analysts believe that the use of VPNs for end-to-end authentication and encryption isrising in India. One of the important trends set to emerge in 2002 is the outsourcing of firewalls and intrusion detection monitoring by Indian enterprises. They are also planningto enhance network security by taking advantage of OS and application security andconducting security audits. Other tools like smart cards and biometrics are also expectedto gain ground in 2002. Firewalls are expected to come with authentication services andcontent filtering facilities as vendors seek to add value.

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of 3Network security: Going beyond firewalls - Networking Special- Express Computer India

07-Jan-08http://www expresscomputeronline com/20020624/network5 shtml

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