Cybersecurity and AI: Shaping India’s digital future

In the horizon of the future of India’s digital journey, the nation has already moved from just building digital infrastructure to crafting intelligent, secure and inclusive digital systems. From being tools, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud sovereignty and cybersecurity are now becoming the pillars of India’s nation building and economic growth.

From digital access to Intelligent transformation

Already, millions of Indians can access essential services easily and securely using India’s digital public infrastructure, such as Aadhaar, UPI, DigiLocker and thousands of online government services. Today, the aim is to have these services turned even more intelligent and usable via AI driven, real time and multilingual platforms. One of the world’s largest AI compute infrastructures is being built by the government’s IndiaAI Mission, with a budget of over Rs.10,000 crore, so that advanced computing power is available to students, startups and innovators in the country.

The role of AI in cybersecurity

India, like many other countries, is also ramping up its cybersecurity efforts, as it has the rapid adoption of AI as well. Through the use of AI, government and private networks are using AI to detect threats more rapidly, automating the responses, and protecting sensitive data. With many services going online, the chances of cyber-attacks are increasing with each passing day; making it crucial for India to invest in AI based security systems and well-trained cyber security experts together. In the 2025 Union Budget, the government's strategic investments in AI and IT are not only to ensure digital connectivity is expanded but are also to improve cybersecurity and ensure responsible deployment of AI.

“This year’s DBIR findings reflect a mixed bag of results. Glass-half-full types can celebrate the rise in the number of victim organisations that did not pay ransoms with 64% not paying vs 50% two years ago. The glass-half empty personas will see in the DBIR that organisations that don’t have the proper IT and cybersecurity maturity – often the SMB sized organisations, are paying the price for their size with ransomware being present in 88% of breaches,” said Craig Robinson, Research Vice President, Security Services at IDC. “While there is no magic pill to swallow that will alleviate the pain of cybersecurity attacks, Verizon’s leadership in educating the public on the types of attacker motives, tactics and techniques is a key head start in raising global awareness and cyber readiness”

AI ready and secure data centres

India’s AI revolution has resulted in huge investment on data centres and cloud infrastructure. Today, powerful GPU clusters to run AI workloads and secure cloud services are also a part of the hyperscale data centres like Yotta NM1 in Navi Mumbai. Besides powering AI research and startups, these facilities are also ensuring that data sovereignty and security are maintained as India’s digital economy grows.

Inclusive, responsible, and secure AI: Comments from experts

Ashish Tandon, Founder and CEO, Indusface says, “Cybercriminals are constantly evolving their tactics, leveraging different attack vectors based on industry, application type, and company size. Security teams can stay ahead by investing in all-in-one, AI-powered AppSec platforms that adapt quickly to these evolving threats. However, even with AI, manual oversight is essential to prevent AI hallucinations and ensure uninterrupted business operations.”

The strategies of cybercriminals are constantly changing and they target businesses according to their industry, type of application, and size. Security teams need to invest in all-in-one AI powered application security (AppSec) platforms that are faster than the security threat. However manual oversight is important to catch any AI errors or hallucinations and to maintain the trust and smooth operation of business operations. Automation and human expertise must now be in a very smart balance when it comes to cybersecurity.

“The rapid adoption of AI in India’s dynamic business environment has introduced complex challenges when it comes to managing machine identities and their privileged access,” said Rohan Vaidya, Area Vice President, SAARC & India, CyberArk. “As AI-driven processes gain momentum, security leaders in India must rethink their identity security strategies to address the growing risk of unmanaged identities, both human and machine. Modernising these strategies is essential to protecting critical data, ensuring compliance, and mitigating the growing threat landscape.”

With AI systems being widely used by businesses to automate processes, analyse or predict data and even make decisions, they need their own digital identities to safely interact with other applications, databases and networks. But if not controlled, these machine identities, API keys, certificates, and token are very much a security risk. If not managed properly, hackers can misuse these identities to access critical systems or steal valuable information. On top of that, AI systems need high level privilege to perform their task, which highlights even more the necessity of auditing and securing access to these systems. With increasing AI adoption, Indian businesses need to strengthen their machine identity management policies and technologies to secure machines without slowing down the pace of innovation.

“The AI that we are now securing is a completely new beast compared to even two years ago,” said Vrajesh Bhavsar, Operant AI’s CEO and co-founder. He added that today RAG applications to AI Agents to AI Inference systems operate at a completely new scale, because of which AI can’t be secured in isolation. AI Gatekeeper can bring Operant’s unique defensive capabilities to everywhere customers are deploying AI, alongside critical new capabilities for protecting sensitive data and the rest of the application environment from the new attack surface that is being fueled by rapid Agentic AI adoption.”

The vision of AI in India is based on inclusivity and ethics. The government is doing everything it can in ensuring that AI helps all, especially people from rural and underserved areas. It entails building AI solutions in several Indian languages and creating a robust data privacy and cybersecurity architecture across every level of digital infrastructure. One initiative is the Centres of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence, to nurture local talent and support research relevant to India’s needs, including DeepTech Fund.

Future outlook

By 2025 and beyond, AI as well as cybersecurity will be at the core of India’s Digital Transformation. The country is not only laying digital infrastructure for the world, but also in a way that is secure, ethical, and accessible to all. To meet India’s vision of becoming the global AI powerhouse, the coming together of intelligent technology and robust cybersecurity will be the key asset for India’s economic growth, invention and public trust in the digital age.
However India integrates AI and cybersecurity into its public infrastructure in the future, it may define India’s future in the digital world via smarter, safer, and more inclusive services for all.

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