GFF 2026: 'Facing 100 cyberattacks everyday', says Neelkanth Mishra as UIDAI steps up AI and Quantum safeguards

Mumbai: Facing hundreds of attacks from hackers every day, the UIDAI Chairperson and Executive Director at the World Bank Group, Neelkanth Mishra, stated that the authority maintains continuous safeguards and deploys artificial intelligence to counter these evolving digital threats.

Speaking to on the sidelines of Global Fintech Fest 2026 in Mumbai, Mishra detailed the operational challenges and technological measures underway to secure national identification infrastructure against bad actors.

"We have been dealing with cyber security and cyber threats from the day we started. We face hundreds of attacks from hackers every day. So we have built safeguards against that," Mishra said.


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The authority applies machine learning mechanisms to detect identity manipulation and block unauthorised access across biometric channels.

"We have been using AI to filter out fraudsters. So we have liveness tests going on for face, liveness tests for fingerprints, and it's a cat and mouse game," he said.

"So with AI improving capabilities significantly for hackers, we need to be several steps ahead of them. And we are investing in those capabilities. We are investing in those technologies," Mishra added.

Looking toward future cryptographic challenges, the authority is initiating measures to protect foundational public-key architecture from being compromised by advanced computing technologies.

"In fact, with quantum coming up, which can actually challenge public key, private key, kind of infrastructure. are also now starting to work on post quantum cryptography to make Aadhaar secure even in the quantum era," Mishra said. Alongside threat containment, UIDAI is expanding its functional footprint across external platforms through software integrations aimed at streamlining resident verification.

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"UIDAI value comes from the ecosystem. So the more number of entities that can use Aadhaar, the better the experience for residents. The more seamlessly and safely and securely they can use," he said.

"So what we have done, we've launched this SDK so that the face authentication, which is the most seamless and effective way of authenticating, can be embedded into many user apps," Mishra explained.

Mishra noted that this will allow significant expansion of use cases and allow residents to use their Aadhaar in many more different use cases and "perhaps even maybe a year later even outside India, which currently is prevented from."