The Hindu Business Line : Symantec upbeat on SMBs

With 54 per cent of the IT spend in the country coming from the small and mid-sized businesses, this market is registering a 20 per cent growth year-on-year, say Symantec sources. According to IDC, there are over 10 million SMBs in the country and this number is rising rapidly.

The greater adoption of technological products and solutions and rising IT spend on the one hand coupled with sophisticated security breaches on the other has necessitated the need for SMBs to ensure data and information security protection.

“These units are more vulnerable as most of them do not have the expertise to protect themselves from traditional threats and insider attacks or a separate IT department to ensure protection. SMBs offer the attackers a bigger bang for their buck,” Mr Ajay Verma, Director, Symantec India, told Business Line.

Sharing a 2006 CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey, he said the estimates revealed that the financial losses arising out of security threats (from over 300 responding companies) amounted to $52.5 million. ‘Identity theft is a big business and hackers have become pretty good at stringing innocuous pieces of data together to make it valuable,’ he added.

Stressing the need for greater simplification and ease of use of security-related IT products, he said Symantec has rolled out an end-point protection tool that would help SMBs secure and protect data, enhance user productivity, ensure availability of critical data, manage recovery time and the like.

To a query on piracy, he said ‘there is a need to create awareness. Last year alone, we did over 1696 updates to anti virus definition.’

Security, he pointed out was a behaviour-based diagnostic. “From a technology perspective, we have to be ahead,’ Mr. Verma said.