Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are poised to significantly increase their cybersecurity investments, with 84 per cent planning to boost spending over the next 12-24 months. This shift reflects a growing recognition of cybersecurity as a strategic business priority, moving beyond a mere IT function, according to the ‘SME Digital Insights 2026: Cybersecurity’ study by Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) and CyberMedia Research (CMR) released on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
Despite strong investment intent, the study highlights a significant readiness gap. While 40 per cent of SMEs experienced a cyber incident in the past two years, only 28 per cent implemented structural cybersecurity improvements post-incident. Furthermore, only 12 per cent continuously monitor their cybersecurity environments, indicating a reliance on reactive rather than proactive security measures. <\/p>\n
Vishal Rally, chief revenue officer, Tata Teleservices, noted the encouraging trend of increased investment plans but stressed the need for cybersecurity to be an integral part of digital transformation. He highlighted that 45 per cent of SMEs identify a lack of cybersecurity expertise as their biggest challenge, presenting an opportunity for technology partners like TTBS to offer simplified, integrated, and continuously managed solutions.<\/p>\n
Prabhu Ram, vice president – industry research group (IRG), CyberMedia Research (CMR), said, \u201cOur study findings highlight a clear inflection point in the cybersecurity journey of Indian SMEs. While investment intent is rising sharply, cyber maturity remains uneven…many are still relying on fragmented security deployments, periodic reviews, and reactive remediation, even as the threat environment becomes more persistent and sophisticated.”<\/p>\n
This gap between intent and preparedness is the defining challenge for Indian SMEs today, he said. “Our analysis suggests that SME cyber resilience will increasingly depend on integrated, continuously managed approaches, a shift already visible among the more mature enterprises in our sample.” <\/p>\n
The study also found that 46 per cent of SMEs allocate less than 5 per cent of their IT budgets to cybersecurity. However, higher allocations among high-intent SMEs suggest that future investments are driven by strengthening existing security foundations. Additionally, 35 per cent of SMEs recognise AI as a cybersecurity enabler for threat detection and automated monitoring, even as 34 per cent anticipate AI-powered cyber threats impacting their businesses within the next two years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are poised to significantly increase their cybersecurity investments, with 84 per cent planning to boost spending over the next 12-24 months. This shift reflects a growing recognition of cybersecurity as a strategic business priority, moving beyond a mere IT function, according to the ‘SME Digital Insights 2026: Cybersecurity’ study by Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) and CyberMedia Research (CMR) released on Wednesday. Despite strong investment intent, the study highlights a significant readiness gap. While 40 per cent of SMEs experienced a cyber incident in the past two years, only 28 per cent implemented structural […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1036457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1036472,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036457\/revisions\/1036472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}