According to a recent article by Harvard Business Review, cyberattacks spiked 20% from 2022 to 2023, with twice as many victims. Major factors responsible for this surge are cloud misconfiguration, new types of ransomwares, and increased exploitation of vendor systems.

As data breaches become increasingly common, organizations must take several steps to safeguard their global capability centers (GCCs) against attacks.

Why Global Captive Centers (GCCs) are Vulnerable to Data Breaches

By 2025, India is poised to have 1,900 GCCs, with the market size touching $60 billion. As GCCs thrive, they become highly vulnerable to data breaches and cyberattacks. Primary reasons include:

• Distributed operations: Most GCCs have a global presence, with operations distributed across different regions and locations. Protecting and managing data across a wide range of operations and according to different regulatory and compliance requirements is challenging. It often leads to inconsistencies in security practices and data protection measures.
• Presence of legacy systems: Organizations that have operated GCCs for decades are at an increased risk of data breaches and cyberattacks due to the presence of legacy systems. These systems, built with proprietary and outdated technologies, lack the necessary security updates and patches to thwart modern-day attacks.
• Relentless growth: The sudden and relentless growth of GCCs often causes organizations to scale operations – without paying the required attention to establishing necessary security measures. Compromising on security to expand reach heightens the risk of attacks and breaches.
• Growing skills gap: Most GCCs also often struggle with a growing skills gap and have limited resources dedicated to cybersecurity. This makes it challenging to ensure 24/7 protection of customer information, financial records, and proprietary business data.
• Remote access: As GCCs increasingly rely on the cloud and other technologies, there is a constant surge in users accessing networks remotely. Transferring data on unsecured devices and networks may cause GCCs to experience malware attacks, security breaches, and data loss, as hackers can easily access sensitive data and systems.
• Presence of third-party vendors: The growing integration of third-party vendors and partners into the GCC ecosystem introduces additional vulnerabilities. Vendors with weaker or non-existent security measures put GCCs in jeopardy.  

How Organizations Can Safeguard GCCs from Attacks

According to PWC, in the next four years, the global cost of cybercrime will rise from $9.22 trillion in 2024 to $13.82 trillion by 2028. As GCCs become increasingly susceptible to modern-day attacks, here are some steps to take:

• Build a robust cybersecurity framework: For GCCs struggling with the barrage of new-age cybersecurity incidents, a robust cybersecurity framework can provide comprehensive guidance and best practice advice to improve information security and cybersecurity risk management. It can outline how organizations must identify, respond to, and recover from data breaches and best meet their cybersecurity risk management needs.
• Conduct regular audits: Regular security audits can help unearth underlying issues and loopholes, allowing GCCs to take necessary steps to bridge gaps. By periodically and systematically evaluating information systems, GCCs can understand how well they conform to essential security requirements and create new policies if needed.
• Strengthen data governance: An enterprise-level data governance strategy can enable GCCs to collect, store, and share data effectively. Such a strategy can also maintain a single source of truth across the organization while defining and enforcing policies, procedures, and responsibilities for managing data and informing decision-making.
• Revisit the incident response plan: Updating and optimizing the incumbent incident response plan can allow GCCs to respond to and recover from any data breach. Leveraging AI technologies, IT staff can quickly detect and resolve incidents, optimize their incident response policies, and effectively address issues like cybercrime, data loss, and service outages that can threaten daily work.
• Embrace intelligent technologies: Harnessing technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning can enable GCCs to bolster their cybersecurity capabilities and protect themselves against emerging digital threats. For example, AI models can enable anomaly detection and threat intelligence by analyzing large volumes of real-time data and uncovering strange patterns, helping GCCs take appropriate action to thwart attacks. By proactively identifying and neutralizing evolving cyber threats, GCCs can safeguard critical assets and ensure business continuity for their parent organizations and clients.
• Partner with experts: Partnering with highly qualified and competent experts with a security-first culture can go a long way in strengthening the overall security of GCCs. While looking for partners, opt for those with robust security measures and certifications like 27001:2022 . This can help establish, implement, and maintain the highest information security standards. Such experts can help protect sensitive information and ensure data confidentiality, integrity, and availability while enhancing risk management and information security awareness.

Wrapping Up

Global capability centers have become innovation hubs, opening over 1.6 million jobs in India alone. With the market size doubling to more than $46 billion in 2022-2023, GCCs are expected to contribute a total revenue of $121 billion by 2030, roughly 3.5% of India’s current revenue.

As GCCs evolve into strategic and operational engines, they must manage and respond to emerging cybersecurity incidents most effectively. Building resilience in GCCs is no longer an option but a critical business priority to sustain and optimize global operations.

Follow these tips to enhance your GCC’s cybersecurity posture, safeguard business operations from attack, and meet your speed of delivery objective.