An online session on “The Changing Face of Cyber” was organised by World Trade Center Chennai.

Mr. R. Krishnaraj IPS, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Chennai City Police delivered the keynote address. Mr. Krishnaraj listed the various changes in cyberspace - more interactions are taking place online, systems on cyberspace have changed, e- governance and more Govt. systems has shifted online. He added that between March and April 2020, India witnessed 86% increase in cyber-attacks. Some of the major cybercrimes included SIM card swapping & cloning, fake UPIs & payment gateways, fake customer care numbers and social media pages, fake online delivery. Mr. Krishnaraj urged the participants to distance themselves from unknown emails and attachments, delete unwanted apps & revoke permissions, check trackers, location mappers, API access to your accounts, use antivirus etc. He also mentioned that the Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt of India has opened a National Cybercrime reporting portal.

Mr. Mayuran Palanisamy, Director and Mr. Rupak Nagarajan, Associate Director – Cyber Security, KPMG were the session speakers.

Mr. Palanisamy listed the sectors that had seen tremendous growth during the pandemic - Edtech, Agritech, Telemedicine, OTT platforms and online gaming. There has been a 59% increase in cyber-attacks in q3 2020 compared to q2 2019. He insisted that Business Communication Plan for pandemic needs to be prepared and companies must simulate WFH scenarios to test the effectiveness of the plan. Third party due diligence and periodic monitoring of security systems is critical, For WFH situations, employ - Multi factor authentication/ end point configuration/ parallel internets

Mr. Rupak explained the major challenges organizations face while processing PII - Record keeping practices, internal communication about employee health, sharing employee records to authorities, and data minimization. Mr. Rupak added that as digital channels increase and the demands on the organizations grow, the quantity of threat exposures and complexity of attacks are growing significantly. He explained an incident management model and communication plan that organizations needs to have in place. Cyber insurance is important, as there is a steady increase in cyber incidents, evolving regulatory landscape such as GDPR and third party risks. The costs that could be incurred will be significant as there are notification costs, forensic costs, regulatory fines, data recovery costs, lost business, reputational costs etc. associated with a cyber-attack.