One in three people unaware of lost personal data in cyber attacks: Rubrik CEO

At least one in three people around the world has lost their personal data in a cyber attack and they are not even aware of it, claimed a survey of more than 1,600 companies from the industry.

IT and security-related decision makers at companies of 500 or more employees participated in the survey conducted by Wakefield Research on behalf of cyber security firm Rubrik.

Bipul Sinha, CEO and co-founder of Palo Alto-based firm Rubrik, said that in the last 30 years of cyber security, the industry has focussed on the prevention of attacks, but now there is a need to build a strategy around cyber resilience assuming that the attacks on the organisation system will happen.

"The world over collectively cyber industry is earning collectively $200 billion in a year and what is kind of depressing is, as per our Rubrik Zero Lab report that one in three people around the world have lost their personal data in a cyber attack and they don't even know about it," Sinha told PTI.

The report cited by Sinha was compiled based on a Wakefield Research survey conducted in 10 countries, including the US, UK and India, between June 30 and July 11 this year.

According to the report, over half (53 per cent) of external organisations surveyed experienced a material loss of sensitive information in the last year, with about one out of every six organisations (16 per cent) experiencing multiple losses in 2022.

In India, 49 per cent of IT leaders feel that security is a missing component in their organisation's data policy, while 30 per cent see their organisations at a high risk of material loss of sensitive data within the next 12 months.

Sinha said it is not possible to prevent the unpreventable.

"You can't have a 100 per cent stop on an attack. Businesses need to have a new strategy around cyber resilience which assumes that attacks will happen. Every business is collecting data.

"Data is growing. IT leaders around the world are saying that data is far exceeding their ability to secure it," he said.

Rubrik Zero Lab report said a typical organisation's data has grown 42 per cent over the last 18 months, with SaaS (software as a service) data driving the most growth overall (145 per cent), followed by cloud (73 per cent) and on-premises (20 per cent).

Rubrik Zero Lab predicted that the total volume of data a typical organisation needs to secure will increase by almost 100 BETB (Back-end Terabyte) in the next year, and by 7 times in the next five years.

Sinha said that with IT leaders in some organisations admitting their inability to secure rising amounts of data, the situation has become "dire" and there is a need for companies to adopt cyber resilience as part of their cyber security strategy.

As per the report, 34 per cent of Indian IT leaders agree that their ability to manage risk to data security has not kept pace with their growth in data.

Around 54 per cent of Indian companies believe artificial intelligence (AI) adoption will positively impact their ability to secure sensitive data, while 24 per cent foresee no impact.