Over 50% India firms raise ICT budget, cybersecurity key concern

More than 50 per cent of enterprises in India have significantly increased their information and communications technology (ICT) budget this year compared to 2021, a report showed on Thursday, as cybersecurity becomes the key concern for firms in the country.

The uptick is due to the ongoing digital initiatives by the Indian government and a surge in the use of digital technologies due to Covid-19, reveals GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

"The optimistic enterprise ICT spending outlook in India for 2022 can most likely be attributed to the growing focus on technology-led investment towards digital transformation activities like cloud migration, automation, and upgrading of legacy IT infrastructure along with favourable government policies," said Pragyan Tarasia, Technology Analyst at GlobalData.

Furthermore, large-scale enterprises and SMEs across the country are progressively changing their business models to deliver digital first experience, he added.

Nearly 56 per cent of the respondents who are key IT decision makers in enterprises claimed that there has been a significant (greater than 6 per cent) increase in their enterprise ICT budget for 2022 compared to 2021 while another 34.5 per cent said there has been a slight increase in the same.

Cloud computing is becoming an integral part of enterprises across all sectors in India including BFSI, retail, healthcare, education, and telecom, as it builds business resilience, accelerates innovation, and optimizes costs.


As a result, enterprises in India are prioritising their investment on cloud computing implementation models.

With the growing digitisation of businesses, cybersecurity has also now become a key enterprise concern, thus stimulating increased investment on IT security hardware, software, and services for the next two years.

More than 80 per cent respondents said their enterprises are prioritising their ICT investment in identity and access management, data protection/security, fraud prevention and transactional security, and security intelligence and management software for investment in the next two years. - IANS