FM Sitharaman, IT minister Vaishnaw meet bankers over looming Claude Mythos; push for faster intel sharing

New Delhi: India will look to establish a robust mechanism for real-time threat intelligence sharing among banks, Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and other relevant agencies to identify emerging threats and disseminate it without delay across the ecosystem, the finance ministry said in a statement on Thursday after finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman chaired a meeting on threats involving artificial intelligence (AI) models.

Sitharaman, along with Union electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, held a discussion with representatives of scheduled commercial banks and other stakeholders to assess the potential impact of emerging threats linked to recent developments involving AI models, particularly the possibility of such technologies being misused to weaponise software vulnerabilities.



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The finance minister noted that the nature of the emerging threats from the latest AI models is unprecedented and requires a very high degree of vigilance, preparedness and better coordination across financial institutions and banks, the statement said.

Sitharaman advised the Indian Banks' Association (IBA) to develop a coordinated institutional mechanism to respond swiftly and effectively to any such threats and directed banks to engage the best available cybersecurity professionals and specialised agencies to continuously strengthen defensive and monitoring capabilities of the banks.

Emphasising the need for proactive action, Sitharaman urged banks to take all necessary pre-emptive measures to secure their IT systems, safeguard customer data and protect monetary resources, the statement said.

Banks were further advised to immediately report any suspicious activity or cyber incident to the relevant authorities, including CERT-In, and to maintain close coordination with all agencies concerned.

Besides senior finance ministry officials, the meeting was attended by officials from the RBI, National Payments Corporation of India and CERT-In.


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Earlier this week, Anthropic said in a statement that it is investigating a report claiming unauthorised access to Claude Mythos Preview through one of its third-party vendor environments. The company had previously stated that it had been in "ongoing discussions" with US government officials about Claude Mythos Preview's cyber capabilities. The company has claimed that Claude can outperform humans at some hacking and cybersecurity tasks, raising concerns, including in the financial sector.

Resilient and stable

Speaking at the PICUP Fintech Conference, financial services secretary M Nagaraju said Mythos is both a threat and an opportunity for the fintech ecosystem, noting that technology will play an important role not only in driving innovation but also in strengthening supervision, risk management and fraud prevention.

"We are moving from scale to complexity where expectations are higher, risks are sharper and systems will be tested far more rigorously," he said, adding that cybersecurity threats, data privacy concerns, credit and asset quality risk, and trust deficit are some challenges that need to be managed to sustain long-term growth.

Nagaraju, in his address, said it is important to ensure that the financial system remains resilient and stable. "A strong financial system must be capable of supporting growth during favourable times while also withstanding shocks during periods of uncertainty," he said.