Driving digital infrastructure security amid a silent cyber war

Cyberattacks today are no longer isolated incidents carried out by lone criminals or opportunistic hackers. They have evolved into highly coordinated operations involving nation-states, organised crime networks, and hybrid threat actors who target the core digital systems that keep economies, governments, and societies functioning. Modern conflict increasingly unfolds through compromised networks, malicious code, and the erosion of digital trust rather than through conventional military engagements.

India sits at the centre of this shift. Organisations in the country face an average of 3,278 cyberattacks per week, significantly higher than the global average of 1,934, highlighting the scale of adversaries’ probing, infiltration, and weaponisation of digital infrastructure. With one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing digital ecosystems—spanning cloud platforms, digital payments, telecom networks, public-sector systems, and essential services—the country is now a priority target in the global cyber conflict landscape.

The threat is not abstract. Attacks today are designed to disrupt governance, compromise national platforms, steal sensitive data, and weaken societal confidence. Hospitals, power grids, telecom operators, financial networks, and cloud environments are all under persistent assault, making the digital domain one of India’s most strategically contested spaces.

Rising Exposure in a Digitised Economy

India’s cyber exposure stems from the rapid digitalisation of services, accelerated cloud adoption, and the proliferation of internet-connected devices. The country accounts for nearly 7% of global email-borne threats and ranks third worldwide in malware detections. Every layer of digital transformation—from hybrid work environments to cloud-native applications and IoT deployments—expands the attack surface.

With over 700 million internet users, a booming start-up ecosystem, and national-scale digital services such as UPI, which processes billions of transactions each month, India’s innovation-led growth has also made it a high-value target. These environments carry identity data, financial information, and operational systems that adversaries seek to exploit.

Geopolitical tensions have further intensified this risk. Rival states increasingly deploy cyber operations to test defences, extract intelligence, and compromise critical systems. The battleground is shifting to “systems we depend on every day,” underscoring the need for resilience as a core strategic capability.

Vijender Yadav, Founder and CEO of Accops, emphasises this imperative: “The only effective response is to embed resilience at the core—securing identities, access, devices, and applications, and ensuring continuity for a distributed workforce. Without this, the next global crisis will unfold across the networks we rely on daily.”

Private Sector at the Heart of Defence

While governments set national strategies, the private sector is now equally central to safeguarding India’s digital backbone. Telecom operators, cloud providers, cybersecurity firms, and technology innovators operate and secure the infrastructure that supports essential services.

These organisations possess the operational visibility and technical capability to detect threats early, respond rapidly, and implement advanced security frameworks. AI-driven analytics, behavioural modelling, automated response tools, and identity-centric controls have significantly improved their ability to counter sophisticated attacks.

India’s digital public infrastructure—Aadhaar, UPI, FASTag, DigiLocker, and cloud-native government platforms—depends on the operational integrity of private companies. Their readiness directly influences the resilience of national systems.

Sujit Patel, CEO and Managing Director of SCS Tech, underscores the urgency: “Digital threats are a present-tense national risk. Telecom and cloud networks sit at the centre of this fight, while AI-driven attacks and ransomware compress response times to minutes. Organisations must adopt Zero Trust, behavioural analytics, anomaly detection, and sovereign data governance to defend critical digital infrastructure.”

Sovereign Digital Systems for Trust and Control

As India’s cloud and telecom ecosystems expand, sovereign digital infrastructure is emerging as a critical defence layer. Regulators and enterprises alike increasingly value jurisdictional control over data, compliance-by-design architectures, and region-specific threat mitigation capabilities.

Policy-aware CDNs, sovereign cloud fabrics, and India-centred threat-intelligence frameworks are gaining prominence. These ensure that data residency, privacy, operational transparency, and regulatory alignment are built into system design rather than treated as add-ons.

Amrit Raj, Product Manager at VergeCloud, highlights this shift: “Sovereign, policy-aware content delivery networks with embedded WAF, DDoS mitigation, and jurisdictional controls are becoming essential. The future of resilience lies in networks where performance and protection converge by design.”

This convergence is crucial as India expands 5G, cloud interconnectivity, IoT deployments, and data centre capacity. Each domain introduces new vectors for exploitation unless secured through coordinated, multi-layered defence mechanisms.

Strengthening Resilience Across the Digital Core

The evolving threat landscape demands a shift from perimeter-led security to continuous, identity-centric, and AI-assisted defence strategies. For enterprises and critical infrastructure operators, this begins with adopting Zero Trust across cloud, network, and application layers.

It also involves deploying AI-native security operations centres capable of real-time threat detection, as well as establishing sovereign cloud controls that align with DPDP requirements and sectoral regulations. Equally important is ensuring strong endpoint and workload protection for hybrid workplaces, actively participating in threat intelligence exchanges with public agencies, maintaining rapid incident response readiness, and embedding security-by-design across telecom, cloud, and IoT environments.

India’s long-term resilience hinges on aligning indigenous innovation, regulatory frameworks, and private-sector execution. Digital transformation must increasingly serve as a shield—reinforcing the country’s capacity to withstand, respond to, and recover from cyber disruptions.

Defending India’s Expanding Digital Frontier

Modern warfare has been redefined, with conflicts unfolding silently across fibre routes, cloud workloads, API gateways, mobile networks, and national digital platforms. Organisations that strengthen identity, access, and infrastructure controls—and embed resilience into every layer—will be central to protecting India’s digital sovereignty.

As the country deepens its national technology programmes and expands its global digital presence, securing the cyber domain is no longer an operational function; it is a strategic necessity. Those who innovate in defence today will protect not only their own networks but also India’s economic stability, public trust, and future readiness.