Cybersecurity remains a priority to telecos amidst limited funding – Industry experts
Zaratu Yussif
A telecommunication industry expert has said cybersecurity and data
protection remain priorities for investment among industry players and
therefore calls on all stakeholders to collaborate in making it a reality.
“Collaboration amongst agencies is going to be important to find ways to protect consumer data, and also, put in frameworks in place that will engender innovation”, Mr Ashiagbey appealed.
However,
he was worried on how (we) give out data about ourselves on a daily basis in
our line of work and how it's affecting us and making us vulnerable to
fraudsters.
Also, a
recently released Kaspersky report has indicated that the share of IT spending
has grown from 23% in 2019 to 26% in 2020 for SMBs, and from 26% to 29% for
enterprises. 71% of organisations also expect their cybersecurity budget to
grow further in the next three years.
This is
despite overall IT budgets decreasing in both segments amid the COVID-19
pandemic, and cybersecurity cuts affecting the most economically hit SMBs.
U.S. tech
giants face 6-10% fines as EU set rules to curb their power External conditions
and events can influence IT priorities for businesses. As a result of the
COVID-19 lockdown, organisations have had to adjust plans to meet changing
business needs – from emergency digitalisation to cost optimisation. The
Kaspersky report, based on a survey of more than 5,000 IT and cybersecurity
practitioners, observes recent IT security economics trends and how they
correlate with this year’s events.
The share
of IT budget dedicated to IT security continues to grow year-on-year, even
though the overall IT budget has fallen from $1.2m in 2019 to $1.1m in 2020
among SMBs, and from $74.1m to $54.3m for enterprises. This decrease may be due
to the consequences of the global coronavirus pandemic, according to Gartner,
whose experts also predicted that budgets would decrease earlier this year.
As a
result, in monetary terms, small and medium businesses allocated $275k to
cybersecurity while enterprises invested $14m. The majority of companies are
expecting these figures to grow in the next three years by 11% in enterprises
and 12% in SMBs, on average. 17% believe it will remain at least the same as
this year.
However,
one-in-ten (10%) organisations said they are going to spend less on IT
security. Interestingly, the main reason for this across enterprises is the
deliberate decision of top management, who sees no point in investing so much
money in cybersecurity in the future (32%).
“2020 has
put many companies in situations where they needed to respond, so they wisely
concentrated all their resources and efforts on staying afloat. Even though
budgets get revised, it doesn’t mean cybersecurity needs to go down on the
priority list,” says Alexander Moiseev, Chief Business Officer at Kaspersky.
“We
recommend that businesses, who have to spend less on cybersecurity in the
coming years, get smart about it and use every available option to bolster
their defences – by turning to free security solutions available on the market
and introducing security awareness programs across the organisation. Those are
small steps that can make a difference, especially for SMBs.”
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