Hospitals Prescribe Bigger IT Budgets for Digital Threats

Treating cyberattacks

- ANJALI SINGH

With rising cyberattacks, major hospitals are now allocating 8–10 percent of their information technology (IT) budgets to cybersecurity, nearly double the 4–7 percent allocation in 2021, sector watchers said. These allocations are expected to rise further to 12–15 percent by 2027, said Vineet Dhawan, chief executive officer of DCT Inc and dcafé. DCT Inc is an IT services company.

Dhawan added that the demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-driven cybersecurity tools, particularly AI-powered security information and event management platforms, has increased by 40 percent year-on-year since 2023. "Nearly half of this demand is now coming from Tier-II and Tier-III cities," Dhawan noted, attributing the spike to high-profile breaches such as those at Apollo Hospitals in 2021 and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in 2022, as well as to stricter regulatory mandates—including the six-hour breach disclosure rule from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and new data security clauses under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission.