Unregistered devices in hybrid working increase hacking risks in India

As hybrid work empowers employees to work from anywhere and ensures business continuity for enterprises, the use of unregistered devices by employees has increased the risks around hybrid work in India, a new report showed on Monday.

Hyderabad: Hybrid work has empowered employees to work from anywhere and ensured business continuity for enterprises for the past couple of years. But, according to a new report, the use of unregistered devices by employees has increased the risks around hybrid work in India.

According to the networking giant Cisco's report, over nine in ten (95 per cent), respondents in the country say their employees are using unregistered devices to log into work platforms. About 82 per cent say their employees spend more than 10 per cent of the day working from these unregistered devices.

"Today, disruption is happening faster than ever. It calls for a re-evaluation of the cybersecurity architecture to ensure that predictivity and intelligence are embedded at the core providing real-time visibility into distributed applications, security, networks, users, and services. Security resilience, preparedness, and response must be at the forefront in order to navigate through the intensifying threat landscape in 2023," Samir Kumar Mishra, Director of Security Sales, Cisco India & SAARC, said in a statement.

Employees use multiple networks to log into their accounts such as their homes, local coffee shops, and even supermarkets. According to the report, about 94 per cent of respondents say their employees use at least two networks for logging into work, and 57 per cent say their employees use more than five networks. It was also mentioned in the report that, over 80 per cent of respondents had experienced a cybersecurity incident in the past 12 months, in which the top three types of incidents suffered were malware, data leaks, and phishing.

As security leaders in the country acknowledge the challenges, 95 per cent expect their organizations to increase their cybersecurity spending by over ten per cent over the next year, and 99 per cent expect IT infrastructure upgrades within the next 24 months, said the report. (With agency inputs)