Nasscom Urges IT Firms to Boost Cyber Defenses Amid Middle East Tensions

While business operations currently remain stable, organizations are proactively reviewing contingency plans and strengthening resilience measures to mitigate potential disruptions should the situation evolve over time.

The member companies have already started taking necessary steps amid the ongoing conflict in the West Asia region.

Companies are reviewing and activating contingency frameworks to ensure operational continuity and uninterrupted service delivery in the event of regional disruptions.

Organizations are prioritizing employee well-being by enabling remote work arrangements and closely monitoring the situation for employees located in affected geographies.

Firms are evaluating alternative infrastructure routing to ensure cloud and data centre resilience and safeguard critical systems.

Companies are advising employees to limit non-essential travel through the region and explore alternative transit routes where required.

Organizations are proactively engaging with clients to communicate preparedness measures and ensure continuity of services.

At the same time, periods of geopolitical uncertainty often see a rise in coordinated cyber threats, disinformation campaigns, and infrastructure targeting. Organizations are therefore advised to strengthen their cybersecurity posture.

Companies must also enforce multi-factor authentication on all external access paths (VPN, RDP, SSH, cloud admin) and implement conditional access controls to counter token-theft and adversary-in-the-middle attacks.

Organisations must assess all third-party vendors with Middle Eastern exposure. One compromised vendor can cascade into sector-wide disruption.

Companies must also conduct employee awareness on social engineering attacks themed around a possible war-like situation, govt. alerts with intent to cause harm.

Nasscom continues to monitor the evolving situation in parts of the Middle East and remains in regular contact with the Middle East Council to assess developments on the ground and extend support where required. The industry body is also coordinating with relevant authorities wherever possible to assist member company employees who may be currently in the region.

- ANI