At the third edition of the National CIO Summit organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry, Dr. Gulshan Rai, National Cyber Security Coordinator for the Government of India said that the Indian economy will become 100% digitized by 2020. As per him, this shift is fueled by rapid innovation in the technology space. However, Rai warned that this transformation would make the country very vulnerable to cyber threats, especially considering that India is one of the five top countries for malware penetration and security breaches. This highlighted the importance of a CIO for an organisation. He also added that there is an urgent need for stakeholders to collaborate and share best practices to mitigate risks.
Rajesh Uppal, Director, KPMG pointed out that mobility, social networking, customer centricity, and optimisation of supply chain are driving digital transformation. He added that digital transformation can be considered to be the convergence of new business models, customer centricity, and technological innovations and that organisations need to build capabilities to walk through this transformation. Uppal also said that successful digital transformation depends on its degree of simplicity from an adoption perspective. He said that risks associated with digital transformation need to be identified and a proper mitigation plan needs to be in place.
Varun Sood, Co-Chairman, CII NAtional CIO Forum and CIO Head Strategic Initiatives, said, that the industry needs to consider adopting a proactive and predictive strategy to stay ahead of threats to their information and systems.
Back in 2013, Dr. Gulshan Rai had said that cyber security was becoming a national concern and that the government was taking initiatives to secure cyberspace. He said, “Cyber attacks by hostile organisations, nations and criminals are on the rise, along with increase in cases of threatening governments, business and individuals by attempting to extract technical, financial, and national security information.” The government had also unveiled the National Cyber Security Policy that year.