The digital transformation of India, accelerated by initiatives like Digital India, has brought unprecedented economic growth—and a stark new reality for cybersecurity. The old, familiar threats haven’t disappeared; they’ve simply been given a powerful, new weapon: Generative AI. In 2025, the risk map for Indian organisations has fundamentally changed, demanding a radical shift in defensive strategy. The question is no longer if you will be targeted, but when and how sophisticated the attack will be.
The New Threat Triangle: AI, Identity, and Geopolitics
The Indian cyberspace is a hotbed of activity. A staggering 265 million cyberattacks were recorded in the country in 2025, with Trojans and File Infectors accounting for nearly 70% of all detections. But the real game-changer is the quality, not just the quantity, of the threats.
1. The Weaponisation of AI
Cybercriminals are now masters of efficiency, leveraging GenAI to rapidly create hyper-realistic deepfake scams and highly convincing, customised phishing campaigns. This has made the human element the most vulnerable entry point. While organisations race to adopt AI for efficiency, the security lag is a significant concern: only 37% of companies report having processes to assess the security of AI tools before deployment. This “Shadow AI” adoption within enterprises is creating a massive, unguarded attack surface.
2. The Identity Crisis
The traditional network perimeter is dead. With remote work and cloud adoption, the new perimeter is digital identity. Attackers know the fastest route to critical data is through compromised credentials. Non-Human Identities (NHIs)—the machine identities for bots, software, and cloud processes—now outnumber human users by a massive ratio, and they are increasingly being targeted.
3. Critical Sector Focus
The attacks are not random. Geopolitical tensions and high-value data have made specific sectors prime targets. The Education, Healthcare, and Manufacturing sectors collectively accounted for nearly 47% of all detections in a recent report, reflecting their criticality and the fact that they often operate with constrained resources, making them a softer target for large-scale, disruptive attacks.
The Readiness Gap
While efforts in areas like advanced malware protection and backup readiness are strong, significant gaps persist where it matters most for modern threats: incident response, secure configuration, and asset hygiene. The average maturity score for Indian organisations is reported at 6.37 out of 10.
This gap is amplified by a persistent cybersecurity talent shortage, with many organisations reporting moderate-to-critical skills gaps. You can buy the best software, but without the skilled eyes and hands to run it, analyse the threats, and respond in real-time, it’s just expensive shelfware.
The Call to Action for 2026: Shift from Prevention to Resilience
To thrive in the post-2025 environment, organisations must move beyond a perimeter-based “prevention-only” mindset and adopt a strategy of cyber resilience.
- Embrace Zero Trust Architecture: Adopt the “never trust, always verify” model for every user, device, and application attempting to access resources. This is essential for securing the decentralised, cloud-driven environment.
- Invest in Identity and Access Management (IAM): Secure human and non-human identities with robust Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Privileged Access Management (PAM). Identity is the new control plane.
- Drill Your Response: An incident is inevitable. The speed of your response determines the damage. Regular, realistic incident response drills, like the national-level exercises facilitated by CERT-In, are non-negotiable to minimise downtime and financial loss.
- Upskill and Re-skill: Recognise that your employees are your most critical defense layer. Continuous training against AI-driven phishing and social engineering is vital, as is an aggressive strategy to hire and retain cyber talent.
The year 2026 will not be a return to normal; it will be an acceleration of the current complexity. The organisations that emerge resilient will be those that view cybersecurity not as a cost centre, but as a core business enabler—a proactive, dynamic capability woven into the very fabric of their digital operations. The time for complacency is long past.
