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Kaspersky ready to comply with India’s data localisation norms

by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business Summit, Events, Markets, Online Marketing, Technology

By Rajnish Singh,

Siem Reap (Cambodia) : As the political narrative in India appears to be tilting in favour of data localisation, Russia-based global cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab said it was willing to “adopt and comply” with Indias proposed requirement to store data generated in the country within its borders.

“The data protection bill is not released yet in India. Once this (data localisation) requirement comes out, we need to adopt and we want to comply,” Kaspersky Lab’s Managing Director Stephan Neumeier told IANS on the sidelines of the firm’s 4th Asia Pacific (APAC) cybersecurity annual summit here recently.

Goals set in the Draft National Digital Communications Policy 2018, along with various Indian government notifications and guidelines such as the Reserve Bank of India’s notification on Payment Data Storage 2018, and the guidelines for government departments for contractual terms related to Cloud Storage 2017 also show the government’s focus on data localisation.

The rationale behind such proposals has been attributed to various factors, such as: Securing citizens’ data, and ensuring data privacy, data sovereignty, national security, and economic development of the country.

The extensive data collection by technology companies, due to their unfettered access and control of user-data, has allowed them to freely process and monetise Indian users’ data outside the country. This has raised data protection and privacy concerns.

Neumeier said he and other Kaspersky members had discussed the matter with India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) chief Gulshan Rai in September.

Kaspersky Lab, he said, saw significant support from the Indian government and the demand and interest on “our technology together” was open there.

The talks of data localisation in India could also influence where in Asia Pacific the company sets up its “Trasparency Centre” — where data from the region can be stored and processed.

While India is not ideally located for the company’s Asia Pacific Transparency Centre, Neumeier asserted that Kaspersky Lab was ready to find solution for India’s data localisation requirements when it comes.

“Because, if we open a Transparency Centre in India, we will also open a data centre there. And with that, we would have the capabilities to store Indian data in India,” Neumeier said.

Noting that Kaspersky was set to open its first and only Transparency Centre in Zurich, Switzerland, in November, Neumeier said the firm was actively looking at Asia Pacific for a similar set-up and that it had discussed the issue with the Indian government.

“We have all the support that we can imagine from the Indian government. However, we need to look into specific requirements before we make a decision where we are going to open that facility,” Neumeier said.
“One is obviously location. We want to fly in people there. It needs to provide easy accessibility. So, India is probably, for Asia Pacific, not a perfect place because it is not very, very central.”

However, he said, all the other “boxes” like “growth in market, access to good talent are very well checked”.
“The skills and capabilities available in India, you won’t find in many countries in Asia Pacific. People are very highly qualified and they really understand their stuff. So, that is the big check.”

Asked about Kaspersky’s business plan in India, Neumeier said the country is one of the “focus markets in Asia Pacific because of its large population”.
“We see massive investment in the manufacturing area in India as it is already becoming more and more a manufacturing powerhouse. A lot of commercial business is already on the growth path and will be growing in future. So, demand for cybersecurity technology is obviously rising.”

With its “Digital India” initiative for increased digitisation, Cybersecurity could become a major concern for the Indian government.

Reported attacks on Indian websites have increased nearly five times in the past four years. According to government data, more than 700 government websites that are hosted under “gov.in” and “nic.in” domains have been hacked by cyber criminals since 2012.

As per the information reported to and tracked by CERT-In, a total number of 44,679; 49,455; 50,362 and 40,054 cyber security incidents were observed during the year 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 (till November), respectively.

(Rajnish Singh was in Siem Reap on an invitation by Kaspersky Lab. He can be contacted at rajnish.s@ians.in)

—IANS

India among top five countries attacked by ransomware: Kaspersky executive

by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Technology

By Sourabh Kulesh, New Delhi, (IANS) India is among the top five countries in the world to be attacked by ransomware — malware that forces its victims to pay a ransom through certain online payment methods in order to grant access to their systems, or to get their data back, says an executive from Russia-based software security group Kaspersky Lab.

“Ransomware attacks are high in India and it is one the top five countries that has most infections,” Vitaly Kamluk, Head of APAC Global Research and Analysis Team, Kaspersky Lab, told IANS.

According to statistics presented by Kamluk during a roundtable discussion on “Security Threat landscape” here on Friday, India takes the first spot in the list of countries that were attacked by Teslacrypt ransomware in March-May 2016 and ranked fourth in the countries that was attacked by Locky ransomware during the same period.

In India, while 11,674 users were attacked by TeslaCrypt ransomware during March-May 2016, 564 users were attacked by Locky ransomware during the same period.

Ransomware is a type of malware that prevents or limits users from accessing their system.

Locky is a Windows ransomware infection that was released in the middle of February 2016. This ransomware infection affects all versions of Windows.

TeslaCrypt ransomware is now defunct. Its master key was released by the developers and a free decryption tool is now available on the internet.

While explaining the data received by Kaspersky Labs, Kamluk said Karnataka (36.58 per cent) was the most affected state with ransomware with Tamil Nadu (16.72 per cent) taking the next spot.

Next came Maharashtra (10.86 percent), followed by Delhi (10.00 per cent), West Bengal (6.70 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (5.33 per cent), Telangana (4.54 per cent), Kerala (3.87 per cent), Gujarat (2.35 per cent) and Haryana (1.96 per cent) at the last spot.

While talking about the global trends, Kamluk said there are majorly five types of ransomware that are making the rounds on the internet today — encryption ransomware, master boot record (MBR) ransomware, screen locker, ransomware encrypting web servers and mobile device ransomware, which is majorly affecting Android devices.

Kamluk noted that internet users who are not aware are the entities most prone to ransomware attacks.

“Popular propagation methods of the infection include infected websites, malvertising (malicious advertising), transfer of affected file via e-mail – such as documents or multimedia files — or instant message and social networks,” he noted.

While answering a question about whether to pay or not to pay to get the data back, Kamluk said, “an attacked user should not pay the ransom as there is no guarantee that the attacker will release a key to you”.

To be safe or to avoid data loss after being attacked by a cyber criminal, Kemluk advised the users to have backups and keep it in a safe place. He said users should use reliable antivirus solution and update them regularly to patch any vulnerable loopholes.

He said governments and antivirus service companies should work together to check the cyber attacks.

“CoinVault decryptor was built by Kaspersky Lab and the Netherlands’ National High Tech Crime Unit to counter such attacks,” he noted, adding that thousands of decryption keys are available for CoinVault, Bitcryptor and CryptXXX infections with the company.

On being asked, will there be a decline in antivirus software usage after the launch of hardware security modules such as “crypto-level security in hardware” in microprocessors, Kemluk said, “Antivirus software is kind of a personal advisor. Unless you have a very technical friend to reverse engineer the threat, you will need these softwares to do that work for you. Antivirus softwares are going to stay because developers will be developing new softwares over time.”

Kaspersky is now rolling out 360-degree security solutions for enterprises, Altaf Halde, Managing Director (South Asia) Kaspersky Lab, India said.

“We have started offering very focussed services to the enterprises, such as solutions for data centres, light agent solution for virtualised environment that does not degrade its speed and performance and solutions for industrial security,” Halde noted.

(Sourabh Kulesh can be contacted at sourabh.k@ians.in)