Accelerating the development of technological solutions has been one of the main needs over the last few years, driven by the changes of the pandemic. But this sudden growth also brought a concern to the Information Technology area, as the number of cyber attacks on companies grew at the same rate. In 2020 alone, there was a 300% increase in the number of cyberattacks in the private sector worldwide, according to a survey by EY.
This data made organizations feel the urgent need to adapt to new consumption and business models, valuing the security and privacy of information stored in the virtual environment. In this way, the topic of cybersecurity has become one of the key points for the continuity of digital transformation. But it is still too early to consider that new solutions will prevent the occurrence of any new type of attack in the digital world.
On the contrary. As a professional in the sector, what I believe is that, just as we have the ability to relearn and develop new products all the time, so does cybercrime. However, we can work in an attempt to foresee possible new problems so that, even before we are faced with these risks, we can find solutions capable of mitigating them. Thus, we will continue to use the internet and our electronic devices to study, work and do business virtually, maintaining the security of our data and the privacy of access to this information.
What I see in the not too distant future will be the increasing increase in online activities aimed at consumption, study and entertainment year after year. Since the pandemic started, the amount of physical transactions has drastically decreased, while virtual trading has only grown. Therefore, it is essential that we continue working on the development of robust security solutions – something that, here at Infosys, we had already been doing even before the pandemic period, focused on helping our customers and partners in this secure digital transformation journey.
In addition, risk mitigation also goes through a very important step within this digital consumption chain: awareness. It is necessary to know more and more about the risks of the virtual world and how to prevent cyberattacks within robust systems. The survey carried out by EY even showed that phishing cases – in which false messages are sent in an attempt to obtain confidential information, such as username, password and even financial data, for example – were responsible for 69% of attacks.
Two other types of attacks cited were malware (54%), which involves data theft and compromise of the IT environment, and denial-of-service attacks (59%). Therefore, I believe that it is necessary for companies to invest more and more in data protection and cybersecurity, but that they can also count on new legislation to help in this direction. An example of this change, which we can already see in Brazil, is the General Data Protection Law (LGPD), which came into force in 2020 and which has been crucial in this modernization of rules aimed at the virtual environment.
Therefore, having confidence and having the necessary resources to carry out digital transformation activities, including migration to the cloud and modernization of applications, will be essential for us to continue providing increasingly better and secure solutions.
Glauco Volpe, Cloud & Infrastructure Services Head at Infosys Brasil.