According to a survey conducted by Websense on 450 Indian CIOs, phishing and spyware are the biggest challenges confronting corporate India. The survey reveals that 57% of the Indian enterprises have received phishing lures during the last one year and over a third of Indian companies (38%) were attacked by spyware.

Key findings of 2007 Websense India CIO survey:

• 65% of Indian CIOs are very concerned about security threats emanating from the web. Of these, the most concerned about "Web Security" (79%) were CIOs of large enterprises. The CIOs from Mumbai (72%) and Bangalore (71%) seemed more concerned about web threats as compared to IT decision makers from Chennai (51%) and Hyderabad (45%).

• Over 55% of organisations in India believe to have received viruses and worms into their corporate network due to their employees surfing the web.

• Chennai-based organisations were the most affected among the Indian cities surveyed with just under a half (49%) having been hit by spyware attacks.

• Just under half (47%) of the organisations surveyed agreed that mobile computing devices like laptops, PDAs and mobiles have heightened the threat to their security as compared to last year.

“The survey findings are an eye-opener and it may assist Indian CIOs in prioritising their IT security spend into technologies that protect organisations from emerging security threats,” said Surendra Singh, head – South East Asia & India, Websense.