Cybersecurity top priority for Indian CIOs post Covid-19: Adobe

The CIOs from India and Australia re-asserted that cyber security continues to be one of the most cited areas for planned investment.

Some of the most prominent areas of cybersecurity related issues for Indian organisations were pertaining to insider threats (45 per cent) and data breaches (38 per cent), said Adobe's ‘CIO Perspectives Survey'.

"As we rapidly moved from functioning in an increasingly-digital world to one that is digital-only, CIOs have had to pivot their strategies to prioritise the online needs of their customers and employees," said Scott Rigby, Head of Digital Transformation, Adobe Asia Pacific.

Nearly 98 per cent of organisations across India have seen Covid-19 impact business functioning, with CIOs facing challenges in helping their teams to communicate effectively and having the right technology deployment to ensure smooth business continuity.

The similar number of the CIOs claimed their organisations are well equipped to work effectively even in a remote setting.

Overall, long-term support to remote workforce (36 per cent), security (35 per cent) and Cloud-based computing (31 per cent) were identified as key challenges for organisations in India and Australia.

In India, cloud computing (58 per cent) and mobility (56 per cent) were named as the primary challenges.

Additionally, while 97 per cent of businesses in India and Australia initiated planning for when restrictions are eased, close to half of the organisations are still in the early stages of planning, with 63 per cent of the respondents in India being optimistic about their organisation's ability to find success in the post COVID-19 economy and committing to a positive outlook.

"Business leaders need to find avenues where large-scale integration of technology can drive efficiency, and create a seamless customer and employee experience, eventually adding to business growth," said Rigby.

When it comes to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) adoption, 82 per cent Indian organizations are already using these capabilities to implement to an existing project.

In terms of assessing the potential of emerging technology such as 5G, 67 per cent of CIOs cited as this making a major impact to business operations in the next five years.

"One-fourth CIOs in India and Australia have listed data-related issues as being the biggest challenge to implementation of AI in operations," said the survey.

Conducted between April 24 and May 7, the ‘CIO Perspectives Survey' surveyed over 100 CIOs in India and Australia, in firms with at least 100 employees.