'Indian consumers wary of data misuse via devices'

New Delhi:  Nearly 86 per cent of the consumers in India are concerned about eavesdropping of their conversations or theft or misuse of their messages through their devices, a KPMG report said on Thursday.

According to KPMG's "Consumer Loss Barometer" report, the focus of the organisations has to be on building trust with customers in the digital era through adequate cyber security to propel business growth. 

Nearly 84 per cent of the consumers in India prefer mobile device usage over apps and cloud. 

However, more than 50 per cent of respondents have limited personal information stored on the Cloud primarily due to security and privacy concerns, the findings showed.

The report that surveyed more than 2,000 consumers and 1,800 Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), identified a mismatch between the priorities of CISOs and consumers in the event of a breach.

"The proliferation of connected and IoT devices will have a cross-sector impact on areas around data security and privacy. In response to this, regulators will need to establish mandatory data security requirements," said Atul Gupta, Leader-IT Advisory and Cyber Security Leader, KPMG in India. 

Executives in the technology sector believe that their company's information security function is highly engaged with the organization's digital transformation agenda. 

However, only 33 percent of the executives in the automotive sector believed so. A sizeable minority said executives were infrequently briefed on cyber security, with only one per cent of the total number of executives briefed on a monthly basis.

"Security leaders prioritise financial loss (60 per cent), costs of business disruption, recovery, and remediation (51 per cent) and reputational risk (31 per cent) over the impact relationship with consumers (21 per cent)," the report added.

While 51 per cent respondents in India believe that additional levels of privacy and security should be embedded within the design of new types of "connected" devices, 59 percent said that it is their own responsibility to ensure the devices you are using have been secured.

Around 87 percent of the consumers are concerned that retailers will misuse or improperly distribute their information. 

"It's clear that organisations are still prioritising their bottomline ahead of consumer expectations and concerns, despite the opportunity to use effective cyber security strategy to build consumer confidence and engagement," says Akhilesh Tuteja, KPMG Global Co-Leader, Cyber Security.