Over 80 CIOs converged at India VIP Forum

BENGALURU: Over 80 CIOs and senior IT decision makers from India and SAARC, spanning key verticals like IT, BFSI, e-commerce, healthcare, retail, manufacturing and media, came under one roof at the India VIP Customer Forum in Athens, Greece from July 15-19.

The event, conducted by security solutions provider Fortinent, presented a platform where CIOs and IT decision makers discussed current security trends and analysed how to address its evolving challenges.

The forum delivered network security information and threat intelligence through a mix of plenary sessions, networking and roundtable discussions on a wide range of topics like advanced threat protection, datacenter protection, specialized security solutions that complement a firewall, and support services required to keep pace with the demands of the enterprise market.

What are the threats targeting Indian Enterprises?

During January – April 2015 FortiGuards labs has recorded over 30.9 million IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) detections in India and about 400,000 detections of ShellShock alone, which still continues to infect Indian systems. Besides, India accounts for 16 percent of the Botnets detected in APAC with about 84 million bonnet-infections. FortiGuard labs has also recorded 105,000 antivirus detections. The malware MyDoom still continues to circulate in India and is the No. 1 malware with 20464 detections.

The most interesting malware is Dorkbot, with 4,066 detections in India. The Dorkbot worm gained publicity in late 2011 after an attack on Facebook’s chat system. Users received a message with a bogus link which appeared to come from one of their Facebook friends. A similar Dorkbot worm appeared later in the same year, this time preying on Twitter users. Downloading and installing Dorkbot malware opens a backdoor on infected computers and allows remote access, potentially turning the computer into a botnet. Last year, FortiGuard labs discovered that Dorkbot has evolved to Blastware with self destructing capabilites, which makes it even more dangerous.

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India has become a potential target with its high Internet penetration, and users opting for online banking, retail and credit cards. Cashless transactions are a norm and e-businesses hold increasing amounts of personal data” said Rajesh Maurya, Country Manager India and SAARC at Fortinet, “These factors along with inadequate security concerns among CISOs was the main agenda at the VIP Forum where security experts from Fortinet brainstormed with CISOs to devise a security plan to help them protect their networks.”

The event educated and assisted Indian CISOs with threat intelligence to help them devise the right strategy to protect their enterprise networks.