Category: White Paper

Most organizations have invested, and continue to invest in people, processes, technology and policies to meet customer privacy requirements and avoid significant fines and other penalties. In addition, data breaches continue to expose the personal information of millions of people, and therefore organizations are concerned about the products they buy, services they use, people they employ, and with whom they partner and generally do business with. As a result, customers are asking more questions during the buying cycle about how their data is captured, used, transferred, shared, stored, and destroyed. In last year’s study (Cisco 2018 Privacy Maturity Benchmark Study), Cisco introduced data and insights regarding how these privacy concerns were negatively impacting the buying cycle and timelines. This year’s research updates those findings and explores the benefits associated with privacy investment. Cisco’s Data Privacy Benchmark Study utilizes data from Cisco’s Annual Cybersecurity Benchmark Study, a double blind survey completed by more than 3200 security professionals in 18 countries and across all major industries and geographic regions. Many of the privacy specific questions were addressed to more than 2900 respondents who were familiar with the privacy processes at their organizations. Participants were asked about their readiness for GDPR, any delays in the sales cycle due to customer data privacy concerns, losses from data breaches, and their current practices related to maximizing the value of their data. The findings from this study provide strong evidence that organizations are benefitting from their privacy investments beyond compliance. Organizations that are ready for GDPR are experiencing shorter delays in their sales cycle related to customers’ data privacy concerns than those that are not ready for GDPR. GDPR ready organizations have also experienced fewer data breaches, and when breaches have occurred, fewer records were impacted and system downtime was shorter. As a result, the total cost of data breaches was less than what organizations not ready for GDPR experienced. Even though companies have focused their efforts on meeting privacy regulations and requirements, nearly all companies say they are receiving other business benefits from these investments beyond compliance. These privacy-related benefits are providing competitive advantages to organizations, and this study can help guide investment decisions as organizations work to mature their privacy processes. The Results GDPR readiness Among all respondents in the Data Privacy Benchmark Study, 59% indicated that they are meeting all or most of GDPR’s requirements today. Another 29% said they expect to be GDPR ready within a year, leaving 9% who said it would take more than a year to get ready. While GDPR applies to businesses located in the EU or to the processing of personal data collected about individuals located in the EU, it is interesting that only 3% of the respondents in our global survey indicated that they did not believe GDPR applied to their organization. By country, the level of GDPR readiness ranged from 42% to 76%. Not surprisingly, the European countries in the survey (Spain, Italy, UK, France, Germany) were generally on the higher end of the range. Respondents were asked to identify the most significant challenges their organizations faced in getting ready for GDPR. The top responses were data security, internal training, evolving regulations, and privacy by design requirements. Sales delays due to privacy Respondents were asked whether they are experiencing delays in their sales cycles due to customers’ data privacy concerns. 87% of respondents said they do have sales delays, whether from existing customers or prospects. This is significantly higher than the 66% of respondents who reported sales delays in last year’s survey and is likely due to the increased awareness of the importance of data privacy, GDPR becoming enforceable, and the emergence of other privacy laws and requirements. Data privacy has become a board-level issue for many organizations, and customers are making sure their vendors and business partners have adequate answers to their privacy concerns before doing business together. When asked about the length of the delay, the estimates varied widely. The average delay for sales to existing customers was 3.9 weeks, and over 94% of organizations reported delays between 0 and 10 weeks. Nonetheless, there were some organizations reporting delays up to 25 to 50 weeks or more. Note that the average delay for sales to prospects was 4.7 weeks, perhaps reflecting the longer timeframes needed to adequately address privacy concerns in a new potential customer relationship. These average delays for both existing customers and prospects are significantly shorter than the average of 7.8 weeks reported in last year’s survey, perhaps reflecting the fact that firms have become better equipped over the last year to answer customer’s privacy concerns. By country, the distribution of sales delays for existing customers ranged from 2.2 weeks to 5.5 weeks. Longer delays can usually be found where privacy requirements are high or in a state of transition, as organizations work to adapt to the concerns raised by their customers. Sales delays, at a minimum, cause revenue to be deferred for some period of time. This can lead to missed revenue targets, impacting compensation, funding decisions, and investor relations. In addition, delayed sales can often turn into lost sales, for instance, when delays cause a potential customer to buy a competitor’s product or not buy the product or service at all. Respondents were also asked to identify the reasons for any privacy-related sales delays at their organizations. The top responses included the need to investigate specific customer requests, translating privacy information into the customer’s language, educating the customer about the company’s privacy practices or processes, or having to redesign the product to meet the customer’s privacy requirements. Business benefits of privacy investments Organizations that have invested in getting ready for GDPR have done so primarily to avoid the significant fines and other penalties associated with not meeting the regulation. However, as the research indicates, there are other significant business benefits associated with these privacy investments. In looking at the sales delays due to privacy issues, the average delay for selling to existing customers was 3.9 weeks. However, those…

Security needs collaboration at individual, organizational, industrial, national and global levels. Networking and knowledge sharing are the key drivers for mitigating challenges in today’s security environment. India faces varied business risks – from public protests to floods, causing damage to life, property and businesses. In 2018, protests and civil unrests saw a wave of new-age student protests, populist issues protests, unrest against private organizations and even identity-based violence. Vigilante violence aimed at religious minorities and marginalized communities allegedly carried out by right-wing groups became an increasing threat in India in 2018. In addition to civil unrests, natural disasters led to severe destruction of infrastructure and life in 2018. Reportedly, close to 600 people were killed in Kerala and Assam after the floods in 2018. The country also witnessed instances of high air pollution, cloudbursts, and landslides in several states. Weather phenomena like dust storms, floods and multiple flight cancellations due to dense fog have led to concerns over the infrastructural ability of the country to handle natural disasters. 2019 will be critical for security professionals due to the Lok Sabha elections scheduled to be held in the months of April-May. As we move into 2019, security professionals are likely to face dynamic and more evolving security threats worldwide. Terrorism and geopolitical stress, along with other traditional security threats, will remain an area of concern along with non-traditional threats in both the physical and cyber realms. Overall business climate for 2019 India’s economic growth has progressed in the last two years. This can be attributed to numerous reforms adopted by the government making India the world’s fastest growing economy, accounting for about 15% of the global growth in 2018. With the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), and with an increasing amount of investments by the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted a growth rate of over 7.5% post-March 2019. Along with this rise, India was also ranked higher in the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) ranking, and the third largest start-up base in the world with over 4,750 technology start-ups. With respect to banking operations in the country, the central government along with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has taken major steps to improve the banks’ recognition of bad assets and to recapitalize public sector banks. The Government of India has also decided to invest INR 2.11 trillion (USD 32.9 billion) to recapitalise public sector banks over the next two years. In 2019, two initiatives driven by the Centre namely the ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ would be playing a pivotal role in India’s economic growth. Under the Make in India initiative, the Indian government is aiming to accelerate the growth rate to 25% of the gross domestic product (GDP) from the current 17%. Under the regulatory framework, all Indian states are on reform and fast growth trajectory, creating favourable conditions for investments and a benign supportive regulatory framework. For achieving these goals, businesses in India are likely to face major hurdles from all the sectors, and India will also have to work strategically to meet the fiscal deficit target for the year. Top business risks Economic Risks Strong economic growth in a few countries has created an imbalance for the emerging markets and has put pressure on their currencies. India has been no exception to this trend with the rupee coming under economic stress and the crude oil bill on the rise. The country’s current account deficit is widening and it is expected to continue growing larger over the next few months. Meanwhile, India has made progress in the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) index and the skill development sector. India’s world-beating economic growth is running up against some big risks like high oil prices, emerging market stress as the era of easy money draws to a close, and policy paralysis in the run-up to the 2019 general election. However, the economist intelligence unit forecasts India’s growth to be at 7.4%, throughout 2019. The next government will take charge in a less than ideal economic environment and will have significant challenges to take the economy back into the stable zone, let alone a double-digit growth rate. The Indian economy is at an interesting stage. In the last few years, structural reforms like GST implementation, demonetisation, insolvency laws, auctioning of public resources, digitisation, expansion of the tax base have created short-term pains in terms of disruptions and high compliance cost. The long-term benefits of these reforms are likely to accrue in 2019 and beyond. The Indian economy looks well-poised for 2019 with low inflation, fairly-valued rupee, under-control fiscal and current account deficits, and transparency in the banking system. Oil price movement will continue to play a crucial role in performance of the Indian economy. The forex reserves of the country at nearly USD400 billion also provides adequate buffer to external sector vulnerabilities.  Environment Risks I n 2018, India witnessed a series of extreme weather phenomena like floods, dust storms, air pollution, cloudbursts and landslides in several states. The Global Climate Risk Index of 2018 ranks India as the 12th most vulnerable country in the world to climate change impacts. In 2018, Mumbai, Chennai, Kerala and Delhi-NCR witnessed heavy rainfall and waterlogging, which disrupted business operations. Floods also led to over a thousand fatalities in several states including Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Assam, West Bengal, Kerala and Karnataka. Kerala witnessed one of the worst floods in South Asia in 2018, where over 1.4 million people took shelter in relief camps and there were close to 500 casualties. Due to the rise in temperature, dust storms were reported in multiple north Indian states. In 2019, the weather situation is likely to worsen due to global warming and drastically changing climatic conditions. Although, the United Nations backed fund has approved USD43.4 million for enhancing climate resilience for citizens in coastal states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha, India lacks the adequate implementation infrastructure. Rainfall, floods and dust storms are likely to continue into 2019…

From the potential of 5G to the power of AI and more, our connected lives are being shaped by the growth of transformative technologies. Powerful on their own, these transformative technologies are now converging to change fundamentally how we interact with the world, how we do business, and even how we communicate with each other. As this convergence continues, formerly separate industries are intersecting in new ways, with new opportunities (and challenges) emerging. Evolution of transformative technologies: Market and technology capabilities continuously drive innovation Transformative technologies enable shifts in how enterprises function and how individuals live everyday life. As technologies become smarter and more sophisticated, and as markets evolve, transformation can begin in new industries. The rate at which we see these technologies take hold has grown rapidly in recent years. Major trends for 2019 Trend 1: Video Everywhere Video’s increasing ubiquity is forcing significant industry change as a growing number of players vie for consumer attention and revenue, and businesses adapt to cope with the rising demand. Driving forces for Video Everywhere trend include the rise of online offerings and platforms, including those from powerful new market entrants; increasing penetration of mobile connected devices capable of capturing and displaying video; advances in network and transmission technologies for sharing it; and the resultant explosion of user-generated content and social video. The trend affects not only media sectors such as TV, home entertainment, social media and games, which are at its heart, but other industries including security, education and healthcare as well that are becoming increasingly reliant on video technology. However, the Video Everywhere trend poses certain challenges that need to be resolved. Infrastructure, network capacity, and user experience Challenge: Current generation network infrastructure is not equipped to support the rapid rise in video traffic. Solution: Next-generation network investment is essential for supporting a reliable, high-quality user experience for a mass user base. 5G will be transformative for video, introducing the massive mobile broadband that will enable streaming of professional video and user-generated content at scale. Content and monetization Challenge: Service providers, broadcasters and platforms competing for a share of video revenues need the right mix of quality content, an expensive commodity that can be difficult to effectively monetize for a good return on investment. Solution: Investment in programming, whether exclusive or acquired, should be proportionate to a video provider’s ambitions and serve clear strategic objectives. Content services, features, and video-specific network access can all be monetized to varying degrees, but video can also serve bigger-picture goals. For telcos and bigtech firms, in particular, it attracts users to a bundle of services that collectively drive revenue and EBIDTA growth and boost customer stickiness. Video should therefore be positioned as a primary tool for elevating the overall value proposition. Privacy and data protection Challenge: Increasing video capture in daily life – whether from smartphones, wearable devices, drones, or satellites – will result in more and more images of private citizens being gathered, stored, and potentially shared. Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, meanwhile, are enabling facial-recognition-based identification, potentially putting people’s privacy at risk. Solution: Governments and regulators must play a key role in protecting citizens, putting the appropriate policy, legislation, and tools in place to prevent breaches of privacy and data protection. Strategies of consolidated media and telco players to take shape in 2019 Fuelled in part by a fear of the threat posed by the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple, a spate of significant M&A activity in the media and telecoms industries has seen key players merge and expand. The impact of major deals involving AT&T and Time Warner, Disney and Fox, Vodafone and Liberty Global, and Comcast and Sky, respectively, will begin to become apparent in 2019, as the strategies of newly enlarged industry leaders take shape. Trend 2: The Edge The Edge broadly refers to processing traditionally performed in a cloud environment that is now being run closer to either the sensor data or the human-machine interface. It is changing the way networks are being deployed and devices are being built, plus enabling new revenue streams as compute resources are available closer to the end consumer. Driving forces for the Edge trend include – the top edge application is video content delivery; real-time or low er latency for time-critical workloads or safety applications; resiliency for situations where the network connection is not optimal or offline; data aggregation and the ability to filter in order to balance storage, networking, and compute; and security and privacy functionality centralized and enhanced – particularly in the IoT domain where end nodes might not be capable. The trend affects service providers, cloud providers, and IoT companies that are particularly centered in the edge discussion. The edge also impacts the entire value chain from semiconductor providers through OEMs to segments like media, security and gaming. The evolution of edge The emerging edge is a new and powerful set of locations for handling applications, and the edge can be anywhere. For example, a connected car is an edge on wheels. With so many target locations possible, some edge solutions will be built to handle less data for fewer users while others will be large and handle massive datasets for many users, including data centers distributed around a metropolitan area. New low-power, specialized chips will power edge devices, and while many people equate the edge with 5G, the edge and edge apps exist today, yet there have been very few 5G deployments to date. As the IoT universe expands to include more devices – some 20 billion units, according to IHS Markit estimates – the sheer scale of data generated in the future will render the current paradigm of a centralized cloud untenable. IoT edge processing saves upstream traffic and bandwidth by turning huge amounts of raw data into immediately usable decisions and directives to feed back to objects and devices downstream, and a much reduced and refined set of data to send upstream to data lakes and other decision-making systems. Barriers…

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are always facing complex and constantly evolving crimes and incidents, which are multi-channel, having dynamic data sources from which evidences are acquired. New technologies give rise to new crimes. Crime and criminal activities are getting advanced day by day, creating an urgent and constant need to upgrade the existing ways of policing. To decrease the rate of crime, to increase the rate of response and to improve the investigation, countries around the world have started moving towards the adoption of digital technologies such as mobile workforce, data collation, data analysis and multiple interaction channels for citizens. Advancement of crime & criminal activities is increasing day by day which has led to an imperative need to upgrade the ways of old-school policing. Traditional methods of policing are now being replaced by smart policing methods. To decrease the rate of crime and increase the rate of response and investigation, countries around the world have started moving towards the adoption of digital technologies in law enforcement. These introductions of technologies and smart policing will allow the law enforcement agencies to proactively tackle the anti-social elements which are looking to harm the serenity of the society. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, robotics, facial recognition, intelligent traffic management, information systems and databases, machine learning etc., are being utilized to provide an edge to our current policing solutions. These technologies will help our law enforcement agencies to tackle the crimes & criminals on the frontline as well as in providing swift response to any form of emergencies. -Uday Kumar Verma Secretary General, ASSOCHAM Across the world, cities that have been able to successfully adopt digital methods of policing have been consistent on the three key pillars of adopting digital policing – Collaboration, Training and Investment. Collaboration Not only internally but also with external agencies and service providers, collaboration is one of the most important step towards improved policing. Globally, law enforcement agencies are collaborating with new technology providers and are assisting them in developing a user-friendly solution for the agency. For instance, around 18 police departments in UK have been assisting one of the leading global companies to develop the mobile platform for police department. The same desktop experience has now been transferred on Android making processes faster and easier for police personnel. Public law and order is very essential to ensure the safety of citizens. India’s policing sector has significantly improved by the adoption of new technologies and digitization of internal processes. The government’s proactive approach to accelerate the adoption of new technologies is transforming the way traditional methods of policing work. ‘S.M.A.R.T’ Policing is experiencing great progress in shaping a better India. At State level, there is a very positive outlook towards the new age policing adoption. Delhi, Kerala, Gujarat and Punjab are some of the areas where the adoption of technologies has been significant. Globally, NEC has a vast experience in displaying capabilities in advanced technologies and solutions such as biometrics (face recognition, finger print, iris, etc.), video analytics and big data analytics, providing faster and one of the most accurate capabilities in handling poor quality images and videos. NEC Technologies India Private Limited (NECTI) has been collaborating successfully as the knowledge partner with Associated Chambers of Commerce of India (ASSOCHAM) since more than two years now. NECTI is delighted to present the knowledge report for the National Seminar cum Expo on Digital Policing. -Anil Gupta Chairman, NEC Technologies India Private Limited Training Every police officer and member of police staff involved directly with the public should be capable to respond to crimes with digital solutions. Hence, bringing such skillsets to every police offer requires essential training. One such case was adopted for 43 Home Officers in England and Wales, wherein College of Policing and the Metropolitan Police Service collaborated to provide cyber-crime training course. Investment Governments across the world are investing significant amount of sums in integrating digital technologies to extend their readiness with regards to digital policing. For example, UK government is providing Euro 100 million towards the transformation of British police forces via ‘The Police Transformation Fund.’ The fund will be used towards tackling cybercrimes and forensics. INDIAN SCENARIO India is at the advent of digitizing traditional services in numerous sectors ranging from healthcare to public safety. Continuing this positive outlook towards modernization, Honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in 2014, devised a new term called ‘S.M.A.R.T’ policing, which means Strict and Sensitive, Modern and Mobile, Alert and Accountable, Reliable and Responsive, Tech-savvy and Trained policing. There have been a number developments in similar initiatives launched at national level which constantly aim to improve the state of digital policing in India. The following are the major Nationwide initiatives by the Indian government: National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) • Ministry of Home Affairs • Budget Allocated: INR 1002.97 Cr NATGRID has been developed to leverage IT to connect approved law enforcement agencies with designated data provider in order to enhance India’s counter terrorism capability. An amount of INR 346.05 Cr. has been sanctioned for the construction of NATGRID facilities such as data centers and business continuity planning (BCP), and it is expected that NATGRID will develop the integrated database available to specialized forces of all states.  NIRBHAYA FUND • Ministry of Women and Child Development • Budget Allocated: INR 2,919.55 Cr. In view of the violence against women and girls which impedes women empowerment by restricting their mobility and is therefore recognized as women rights violation, the Government has set up Nirbhaya Fund. The Fund is aimed to be utilized for projects for women security and safety like surveillance, mapping, street lighting, safer public transport, improved policing etc. Municipal Corporations and Police Commissionerate of the respective cities are working to bring forth a development plan for each city. The government has chosen 8 major cities namely Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Lucknow, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad for the development of infrastructure and to make the cities safer for women.  DIGITAL POLICE PORTAL • Ministry of Home…