A survey conducted by a UK-based IT security provider Sophos has found out that over 76 percent Indian companies were hit by cyber attacks in 2018.

India stands at third spot of highest number of cyber attacks in 2018 after Mexico and France. Meanwhile, 68 percent organizations in the world admitted of being a victim of the cyber attacks last year.

Managing director sales at Sophos India & SAARC, Sunil Sharma  told Business Today,  "In India, most of the attacks are happening where the money is, which means the financial services, oil and gas and energy sectors. These are the places where cyber-criminal can make most of his money and they are hit most by them."

The survey was carried out in 12 countries which includes US, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, India and South Africa, and there were about  3,000 IT decision-makers from mid-sized businesses.

"Server security stakes are at an all-time high with servers being used to store financial, employee, proprietary and other sensitive data. Today, IT managers need to focus on protecting business-critical servers to stop cyber criminals from getting on to the network," Sharma further added.

"They can't ignore endpoints because most cyber attacks start there, yet a higher than expected amount of IT managers still can't identify how threats are getting into the system and when."

The survey report reveals that in India, 39 percent of the cybercrimals are detected at the server, 35 percent are on the network, and 8 per cent are found on endpoints.

"It has been found that the visibility is not there. We don't know what kind of attack. We don't know how many modes it has actually traveled. We don't know how the attack is damaging, which are the endpoints, where it has actually made damage. All that visibility is not available and it is also not helping them to take right decisions," Sharma said.

According to the survey report,  97 per cent IT managers admitted that cyber security is the greatest challenge in India.