Infection and compromise of systems and devices is not a recent phenomenon. However, malware in the contemporary times are highly sophisticated in nature. In fact, as per a report, malware nuisance would significantly increase in the year 2016.

Malware writers are no more script kiddies who hack for the sake of fun. Now the motive of these hackers ranges from cyber espionage, financial gains to cyber warfare. Naturally, malware play a key role in achieving these objectives.

Malware are a big cyber security nuisance for long. Cyber security vendors have been trying to contain various sophisticated malware that come up from time to time. As the nations and state actors have become interested in these malware and some of them are even funding their development and exploitation, cyber security products and services are finding it difficult to match their capabilities.

Till the time a cyber security product or service is launched to contain a sophisticated malware, the havoc and damage is already done. In this article titled “Malware Are Defeating Cyber Security Safeguards With Ease“, this fight between malware and cyber security products has been aptly described.

Presently malware are clearly winning the fight between security and system infections as security products are inherently incapable of tackling zero day vulnerabilities and state sponsored cyber attacks.

In the research article titled “Prospective Cyber Security Trends In India 2015“, Perry4Law Organisation (P4LO) predicted that state sponsored cyber attacks would increase. This actually happened and even Twitter and Google issued warnings that state sponsored cyber attacks may be there for their products and services. The “Cyber Security Trends In India 2016” have also predicted the rise of botnet, malware and cyber attacks against critical infrastructures around the world.

It is a wake up call for the cyber security vendors to either improve their security products and services or become redundant and ready to be exiled. What is the purpose of an anti virus that cannot detect and remove a malware?

At the same time there is a need to change the attitude towards cyber security by individuals, companies and governments. At the organisation level, there must be a techno legal policy for cyber security that should be religiously followed. Any lapse in the policy may be lethal for the financial and brand value of the organisation.

As far as India is concerned, India is still struggling to establish the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) culture. Even at the government level, CISO culture is still missing. For instance, recently the Prime Minister Office (PMO) of India appointed Dr. Gulshan Rai as the first CISO of India. Although this is a very good and pro active move yet we have seen little development in this regard so far. Similarly, appointing the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) was made mandatory for all banks in India in 2012 yet till 2016 banks have not done so. In fact, cyber security of banks in India is in a very poor condition.

Even the government projects like National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC), etc have failed to achieve for what they were contemplated. There are no cyber breach disclosure norms in India as well. As a result we have almost missing cyber security infrastructure in India that needs to be revamped and strengthened immediately. This is more so when India has introduced the “Digital India” project that would make Indian infrastructure vulnerable to sophisticated cyber attacks from around the world. When everybody is passing the buck who is going to bell the cat named malware.