Building Resilience in India’s Cyber Ecosystem | 01 Dec 2025

India's digital revolution has brought unprecedented financial inclusion, but it has also opened new frontiers for cybercriminals. From phishing and fake apps to AI-driven deepfakes and digital arrest scams, fraudsters are targeting the most vulnerable- senior citizens, first-time smartphone users, and rural populations. While banks invest in security infrastructure and government initiatives like 'RBI Kehta Hai!' raise awareness, the weakest link remains the individual user. The rise of mule accounts and sophisticated social engineering attacks underscores that cyber hygiene must become as routine as personal hygiene. In this battle, an alert and informed citizenry is not just helpful, it is the first and most critical line of defense.

What is India's Current Cyber Security Architecture?

• Strategic Core (Policy & Coordination): Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is responsible for formulating national policies related to information technology, including cybersecurity policies and strategies. 
  • National Cyber Security Coordinator (NCSC): Coordinates between multiple agencies (military, intelligence, civilian) to prevent "siloed" responses. The NCSC advises the PM on strategic cyber threats. 
• "Shield" (Civilian & Critical Infrastructure Defense): This layer protects the public internet, government networks, and critical sectors like banking and power. 
  • CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team): The "First Responder." It issues alerts, handles incident response, and mandates reporting of cyber incidents within 6 hours. 
  • NCIIPC (National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre): Exclusively protects "Critical Information Infrastructure" (CII), systems whose destruction would impact national security or the economy (e.g., Power Grid, Banking, Railways). Unlike CERT-In, it is not public-facing. 
• The "Sword" (Military & Intelligence): This layer handles cyber warfare, espionage, and offensive capabilities. 
  • Defence Cyber Agency (DCA): A tri-service command (Army, Navy, Air Force) operational since 2021. It focuses on both defensive (protecting military networks) and offensive (disrupting adversary networks) operations. 
  • NTRO (National Technical Research Organisation): The technical intelligence agency. It conducts surveillance and monitoring of communication networks to detect external threats. 
• The Legal & Regulatory Framework:  
  • Information Technology Act, 2000 (and 2008 Amendment): The current primary law. It is widely considered outdated for modern threats like AI and quantum computing. 
  • Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA), 2023: The new privacy law that mandates how companies must protect user data, introducing heavy penalties for breaches. 
  • Proposed: Digital India Act (DIA), aims to replace the old IT Act to create a more comprehensive legal framework for India's digital ecosystem, focusing on online safety, user rights, and accountability for digital platforms. 

What are the Most Pressing Cyber Threats Confronting India? 

• Digital Arrests & Psychological Siege: The evolution of cyber extortion has moved from technical hacking to psychological siege, where fraudsters create a "digital panopticon" to terrify victims.  
  • By impersonating enforcement agencies like the CBI or Narcotics Bureau over video calls, they exploit the fear of state authority to place victims under "virtual house arrest." 
  • In late 2024, losses from "Digital Arrests" exceeded ₹120 crore in just one quarter. 
    • Recently, Maharashtra Cyber police arrested four more in a ₹58.13 crore scam where a 72-year-old was duped by fraudsters posing as officials. 
• AI-Driven "Sophisticated" Fraud: The democratization of Generative AI has lowered the barrier for high-end fraud, allowing criminals to bypass traditional biometric security like Video KYC.  
  • This "sophisticated fraud" uses deepfake voice clones and lip-synced videos to trick not just individuals but also banking verification systems. 
    • The 2025 Identity Fraud Report found that a deepfake attack happened every five minutes in 2024, while digital document forgeries surged. 
• The "Mule Account" Epidemic: India's financial system is currently battling a massive infrastructure of "mule accounts", rented bank accounts used to layer and launder stolen funds.  
  • These accounts act as the "smurfing" layer, breaking down large stolen sums into untraceable micro-transactions before they exit the country. 
  • Recently, an 8-member gang, including a private bank employee, that created over 120 mule bank accounts and sold them to cyber fraudsters operating from outside the State has been arrested in a joint operation by Hyderabad’s cybercrime wing and the Commissioner’s Task Force, East Zone.  
• Supply Chain & Third-Party Risk: The most critical vulnerability for Indian enterprises is no longer their own network, but the "unsecured backdoors" of their smaller, third-party vendors.  
  • When a service provider is compromised, it creates a cascading "domino effect" that paralyzes major downstream financial or critical services. 
  • In July 2024, a ransomware attack on C-Edge Technologies halted payments for 300+ banks across India.  
    • Reports indicate 52.6% of Indian organizations suffered breaches via third-party vendors in 2024. 
• Ransomware Targeting Healthcare: Healthcare has become the "soft underbelly" of India's critical infrastructure due to the high value of medical records (PHI) and the prevalence of legacy IT systems.  
  • Attackers are shifting tactics from simple encryption to "double extortion", threatening to release sensitive patient data if the ransom isn't paid. 
  • The Star Health Insurance breach (late 2024) compromised 31 million customer records, including medical reports.  
    • The Indian healthcare sector emerged as the most targeted industry for cyberattacks in 2024, accounting for 21.82% of total incidents. 
• API & Endpoint Vulnerabilities: As India races towards a "API-first" economy (UPI, ONDC), unsecured Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) have become the primary gateway for mass data exfiltration.  
  • These "leaky pipes" often allow unauthorized access to vast databases without requiring complex hacks, just by manipulating endpoint requests. 
    • For instance, in 2024, a flaw in Hathway’s API exposed the personal data of 41 million users. 
• Fake Trading & "Pig Butchering" Scams: Investment fraud has industrialized into a transnational organized crime model, often run from Southeast Asian "cyber-slavery" compounds.  
  • These scams use fake trading apps that simulate high returns ("pig butchering") to groom victims over months before stealing their life savings. 
  • India lost approximately Rs 11,333 crore to cyber fraud in the first nine months of 2024, according to data compiled by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), a division of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). 

What Measures are Needed to Enhance Cyber Hygiene in India? 

• National Cyber Hygiene Curriculum for All Public Interfaces: Embedding short, multilingual cyber-safety modules across schools, colleges, CSCs, government offices, and public digital touchpoints can institutionalise awareness.  
  • These micro-learning capsules must be interactive and scenario-based. This mainstreams cyber hygiene as a life skill, not optional knowledge.  
  • A uniform curriculum enhances consistency across states. It also creates a pipeline of cyber-aware citizens across generations. 
• Mandatory Cyber-Safe Procurement Standards for Digital Hardware and Software: Creating procurement guidelines that mandate minimal security benchmarks for all public and private-sector IT products ensures ecosystem-level hygiene.  
  • This includes secured firmware, verified supply chains, and pre-validated apps. Such standards prevent vulnerabilities from entering systems at the source. 
  • Institutionalising “Security-First Procurement” reduces downstream risks. It also incentivises vendors to align with national cyber safety objectives. 
• Zero-Trust Adoption Framework for MSMEs and Local Governance Bodies: Creating simplified, low-cost Zero-Trust guidelines tailored for MSMEs and panchayat offices ensures security for often-neglected sectors.  
  • This includes micro-segmentation of networks, identity-verified access, and continuous authentication.  
  • Such frameworks convert complex cybersecurity into actionable checklists. It reduces attack surfaces at the grassroots institutional level. It also enhances confidence in digital public services. 
• AI-Driven Early Warning and Digital Behaviour Profiling for Citizens: Deploying AI bots and mobile-based assistants can provide personalised safety alerts based on risky user behaviour patterns.  
  • These systems can caution against suspicious links, insecure networks, or unsafe app permissions.  
  • Lightweight AI tools help individuals with low digital literacy. They ensure proactive, user-specific cyber hygiene guidance. This transforms prevention from generic to adaptive. 
• Regulatory Push for “Minimal Data Footprint” Practices: Mandating services to collect only essential data reduces exposure to potential breaches. Data-minimisation policies enforce disciplined storage and controlled retention cycles.  
  • This shrinks the vulnerability surface of citizens. It encourages privacy-centric design across industries.  
  • Such regulatory restraint aligns cyber hygiene with constitutional data-protection ideals. 
• "Algorithmic Behavior Locking" for Mule Accounts: The current banking system relies on "KYC" (Know Your Customer) at entry, but we need "KYB" (Know Your Behavior) throughout the lifecycle.  
  • Banks should implement dynamic risk scoring that flags accounts showing "mule behavior", such as sudden high-velocity transfers in dormant accounts or rapid "money-in, money-out" patterns.  
  • If an account’s "risk score" spikes, it should be temporarily "locked" or placed in a "receive-only" mode until biometric re-verification is done by the account holder. 
• Securing Critical Infrastructure with Sector-Specific CERTs: Each critical sector, energy, transport, health, finance, should operate specialized CERTs with domain expertise.  
  • These units must conduct continuous red-teaming, stress-tests, and penetration audits tailored to sectoral vulnerabilities.  
  • Inter-CERT coordination ensures resilience against cascading failures. Strict cyber-contingency protocols should be embedded in disaster management plans. This ensures continuity of essential services during cyber shocks. 
• Encryption-First Public Digital Infrastructure: All public digital platforms must adopt end-to-end encryption as the default rather than an add-on.  
  • Encryption governance frameworks should mandate regular key rotation, cryptographic updates, and quantum-resistant algorithms.  
  • Citizen-facing platforms should enforce mandatory secure log-ins. Cloud services used by government departments must follow encryption uniformity guidelines. 
    • This enhances trust in Aadhaar, health systems, and digital payments architecture. 

Conclusion:

Building cyber resilience in India now demands a shift from reactive protection to proactive digital discipline embedded in every citizen’s routine. Strengthening architectures, tightening governance, and empowering users together create a layered defence against evolving threats. As digital fraud becomes more psychological and AI-driven, awareness must travel as fast as technology.  "In the age of invisible dangers, cyber hygiene is the new civic duty-practised quietly, yet protecting loudly."