Digital Transformation and Cyber Security Must Complement Each Other to Ensure Smooth Business Operations

This is an exclusive article series conducted by the Editor Team with Ambarish Kumar Singh, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Godrej & Boyce

Digital transformation is all about using digital technologies and making the experience of customers, employees, and stakeholders delightful beyond providing better products and services as per their needs and expectations. It is a continuous process as needs and expectations are evolving at a very fast pace.

In the last three to four years, adoption of digital technologies by individuals and organizations has increased exponentially. Covid has accelerated this many folds. With the advancements in digital technologies such as cloud, analytics, process automation, virtual and augmented reality (AR&VR), computer vision, and many more, organizations have realized the potential of such technologies, and they are in a rush to adopt and provide the best experience to their customers with every product and service they provide. It is widely known that every organization is at a different stage of adoption of such technologies based on their industry, customer segment, brand positioning, business operations, etc.

According to IDC’s Asia/Pacific Digital SME Survey, nearly 67% of growing businesses believe digitalization is vital for business agility, but only 4% are digitally agile.

We have seen great success of new age companies such as e-commerce, cloud kitchen, quick delivery, supply chain, payment system, and many others who have used and demonstrated usage of the latest technology stack. These new-age companies were borne in the cloud and used the majority of the digital technologies at scale and reaped the benefits very early. Companies that are lagging in adoption of such technologies have now started their journey as they can see a clear return on investment and are confident of success. Digital transformation initiatives have been successful in scenarios where technology is helping solve business problems at hand rather than imposing itself on business and then trying to find a use case.

Some of the stellar examples of digital transformation are the Indian Railways reservation system, UPI payments, digital banking, e-KYC using the digital infrastructure of India, e-commerce, cab booking services, cloud kitchens, and quick delivery apps that have totally revolutionized the ecosystem, enhancing the customer experience. They have unlocked great potential by using the latest technology and created new business opportunities, revenue streams, and jobs that never existed before. Today, we trust digital platforms and ecosystems. It is a fact that once we order something online, we know it will arrive, when it will come, along with updated status of the product, the right product, a return policy, transparency in payment, offers, and many more. This has changed consumer behavior, expectations, and demands.

While adoption of digital technologies to transform business operations is unavoidable, organizations’ exposure to cyber threats has skyrocketed, and so have the breaches. In a rush to adopt new technologies without realizing cyber exposures, many companies have suffered financial losses and faced loss of brand value, legal complications, negative impact on business, and loss of customer trust. Cybercriminals took advantage of this as they succeeded in breaching, threatening organizations for ransom, and selling customers, employees, and business data in the dark web, thereby causing financial, legal, and reputational loss to many companies.

Data suggests that cyber breaches were at their peak during the pandemic as cyber criminals realized the potential of exposure by understanding the ways of working such as:

The pandemic pushed everyone to adopt digital tech in quick time in order to enable business. While many organizations did that, some did not take due care to address their exposure to cyber threats.

As we adopt new technologies, our threat landscape also changes, and we need to be careful about the same. Cybersecurity programs must be designed to look at every aspect of infrastructure security holistically. We need to consider how we will take care of the following (but not limited to):

Digital transformation and cyber security must complement each other and go hand in hand to get the maximum return on investment (RoI) and ensure smooth business operations. One of the most important aspects of transformation is managing the change well. In the roles of CTO, CIO, CDO, and CISO, we need to have a well-thought-out strategy and invest time to manage the change effectively across all levels in an organization. This will ensure smooth adoption, full cooperation, real feedback for improvement, faster business value realization, opening gates of innovation, and, in the long term, building an appropriate culture.