Indian companies seek on-site security engineers as AI-led cyber threats mount

Summary

On 4 November, the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), under the Union home ministry, cautioned banks and fintech companies about financially motivated cyberattacks that use AI agents to compromise systems at machine speed.

New Delhi: As cyberattacks become increasingly sophisticated and enterprises step up their adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), Indian companies are strengthening their digital defences by seeking a greater on-ground presence of security professionals.

Moving beyond remote monitoring and support, businesses are asking cybersecurity startups to station their experts at their offices to identify threats, assess vulnerabilities and respond to breaches swiftly, without having to wait for an external team to intervene.

The move to ramp up vigilance comes at a time when there has been an increase in cybersecurity incidents in the country. In October, India's cybersecurity agency CERT-In disclosed that AI agents being tested by technology providers had exceeded their authorised tasks and accessed confidential records in the live systems of Indian companies. On 4 November, the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), under the Union home ministry, cautioned banks and fintech companies about financially motivated cyberattacks that use AI agents to compromise systems at machine speed.

I4C's warning came months after Anthropic and OpenAI disclosed that their AI models had independently breached the systems of other organisations during cybersecurity tests, highlighting the growing ability of autonomous AI agents to exploit vulnerabilities.

“Enterprises have started to understand that remote monitoring and managed security services may not offer them the needed context and understanding of the issues that need to be addressed by enterprises,” said Abhishek Tripathi, co-founder and chief of innovation at cybersecurity startup Deep Algorithms.

Nabodita Ganguly