CIOInsider India Magazine
What is a Good Cyber Defense Strategy?
Sandeep Bhambure is an industry veteran with over two decades of strong professional experience in spearheading leadership roles in leading, retaining and sustaining high performing teams, maintaining strategic relationships and so on.
Data is the currency of the digital age, making it all the more important to be proactive in the wake of cyber-attacks. Inducing artificial intelligence in defense strategies bolsters data resilience. Recently, CIO Insider magazine had the opportunity to interview Sandeep Bhambure, Vice President and Managing Director—India and SAARC, Veeam Software. Sandeep has a rich leadership experience spanning over 20 years in the various domains of the IT sector. He is an industry veteran with a proven track record of consistently driving business growth and operational execution, leading and sustaining high-performing teams, and maintaining key business relationships. During the interaction, Sandeep painted a reality view on matters related to data protection and the ways to smoothly navigate through the digital landscape while abiding by local laws. Let’s dive into the crispy details below.
How do you envision the future of data security in India five years from now?
Given that the data universe doubles every two years and an economy that is expected to add $4 trillion over the next five years, I would say that the data landscape in India will grow much faster than many other countries. Additionally, the aspirations of Indian corporates to lead on the global stage could amplify the significance of security and data protection for all of these companies, as they need to be competitive and adhere to the local laws of the land. At the same time, the Indian government is encouraging companies to be more innovative and compliant and to drive initiatives to secure and protect their data. Therefore, I believe there's going to be a multi-fold growth ahead, particularly in areas such as data security, data protection, and data resilience, which will serve as strategic importance for organizations.
The Cyber-sec tools are extremely advanced today. What is the role of experience in using these tools and technologies?
Today, AI tools are leveraged by both sides—the attackers as well as the data security and resilience companies. Let's take the example of Veeam, a leader in data resiliency with over 550,000 customers worldwide. We hold a wealth of information about different scenarios that different customers have faced over the years, encrusting support, recovery, response, and so on. We are able to infuse AI into this wealth of information & experience to drive better outcomes for our customers and ensure a better customer experience. Take a scenario where we have recorded about a million support incidents in our systems, and a customer asks for support regarding a security or breach scenario. Since we have experienced that before, GenAI could proactively search, navigate through the database or pool of information and guide this customer to take the proper steps to get them out of this situation and help them recover their data.
Moreover, we are using LLM and inline entropy analysis while also working in tandem with Microsoft to proactively alert customers about an impending ransomware attack or help them create multiple scenarios, recovery scenarios, and similar others.
What approach would you recommend to organizations to remain in a secure environment?
The most fundamental recommendation is for customers to have a holistic end-to-end approach to cyber resiliency. Cyber resilience is about multiple tenets of data management coming together; it's crucial to have the best practices around data protection and recovery. This could help you savor data freedom and develop the ability to recover anywhere and protect data on the cloud as well as on-premises. Data security and data intelligence are grouped together under the umbrella of cyber resilience. Hence, I strongly recommend an end-to-end approach to cyber resilience to customers since it will equip not only them with confidence but also the ability to be competitive and innovative on the global stage.
How is Veeam’s Ransomware Whitepaper helping India’s public and private sector organizations?
Let’s take the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act. We have, in fact, published a Whitepaper about comprehensive ransomware mitigation strategies for companies in India. It provides rich insights, instructing organizations on how to align with the DPDP Act. I believe that the Act impacts individuals and companies, when it comes to compliance. Organizations can refer to the paper while implementing best practices around data protection, in addition to getting information on the guidelines of data consent, ransomware mitigation strategies, steps to be taken, recommendations around impact assessment, training, implementation and direct best practices. There are also penalties for not following or aligning with the Act. However, from an organizational standpoint, what I believe is more important is that organizations should not be looking at the DPDP Act as compliance but more as a strategic advantage for them to compete in the global markets.
Therefore, defense is the most important strategy.
I’d like to raise two key points. First, build the last line of defense: a robust data protection strategy within the data resilience framework. Data backup is going to be the last line of defense. About 92 percent of ransomware attacks are saved due to backup copies being the fastest and most promising way of recovering your business back in action. If backup copies are not secure or protected, organizations will not be able to bring back their data and their business on time. Therefore, my recommendation and advice to organizations would be that, yes, they would have spent millions of dollars in protecting the attack surface, but they should also look at the defense surface more strategically. If 75 percent of companies are still facing ransomware attacks, it simply means that the attackers are smarter.
Second, a more holistic approach to cyber resilience should be developed from the pre- and post-incident standpoint. There should be clearly implementable best practices and processes and steps that companies should take in the pre-incident stage. You should have documented processes to deal with the situation during the incident. Then, in the post-incident stage, if the data still gets compromised, there needs to be clear guidelines and processes to recover the data, as well as the ability to perform forensic trial analysis or even negotiate with the attackers in the post-incident stage. You should also have the ability, tools and processes in place to decrypt and recover all the data. Therefore, defense is the most important strategy. After all, “the best defense is a good offense.” Then, having an end-to-end approach to cyber resilience is important.
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