India has entered a new era of risks, current defences no longer enough, warns top cybersecurity guy

India’s rapid digital expansion has ushered in a far more complex cybersecurity landscape, with conventional and manually operated defence systems increasingly struggling to keep pace with sophisticated, automated cyber threats, National Cyber Security Coordinator Navin Kumar Singh has warned.

He underscored the growing importance of artificial intelligence-led security frameworks for safeguarding critical infrastructure and digital ecosystems.

Addressing the CyberComm 2026 conference organised by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Singh said India’s rapidly expanding digital public infrastructure -- including Aadhaar, Unified Payments Interface, Open Network for Digital Commerce and extensive citizen databases -- has transformed the country into one of the most digitally connected economies globally. At the same time, he noted, the scale of digital integration has substantially increased vulnerabilities to cybercriminal activity and attacks by state-sponsored actors.


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Describing the use of "AI to fight AI" as an urgent necessity, Singh called for deeper collaboration between industry and government, alongside real-time exchange of cyber threat intelligence, to strengthen the country’s overall cyber preparedness and resilience, ToI's report (by Aabhas Sharma) said.

He said advances in artificial intelligence have led to a "real quantum jump" in cyber capabilities on both the offensive and defensive fronts. Singh also cautioned that open-source AI models with capabilities comparable to advanced systems such as GPT-5.5 could become widely accessible within the next six-to-nine months.

India’s internet subscriber base has expanded more than three times over the past decade, while per capita internet data consumption has increased nearly 400-fold, Singh said.

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He added that India’s Digital Public Infrastructure framework -- built on interoperable public digital platforms combined with private-sector innovation -- is increasingly attracting global attention as a model for digital transformation.