Bangalore: The tenacity of Indian firms to fix the loopholes in information security practices has strengthened their grip over the field surpassing their North American counterparts. "Security efforts of Indian organizations have surpassed those of companies in the United States and we expect this trend to continue," says Mark Lobel of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

India's strengthening position in the information security area is found during the State of Information Security Survey 2008 which found that companies in India have shown strong, consistent, double-digit gains across every security domain. It found that it is the country's firms' efforts that Asia is stepping up in the domain as more organizations are adopting to security practices including encrypting databases (55 percent), laptops (50 percent), backup tapes (47 percent) and other media. The survey said, "Boosted primarily by the widespread progress made by companies in India, Asian companies are now on par and many surpass North American companies in establishing leading practices in security while Europe appear to have stalled."

The survey conducted by the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and CIO and CSO magazines polled 7,000 information technology executives from 119 countries from March to June on the challenges of protecting corporate information assets. Among the respondents, 59 percent said that they were implementing an 'overall information security strategy' which includes the increased use of intrusion detection software, firewalls and the disposal of outdated computer hardware. Moreover, 79 percent of the respondents claimed that the level of the security spending will either increase or remain the same.