Silent cyber threats push India toward national cyber intelligence

India is fast becoming a digital superpower. With more than 1.1 billion mobile subscribers, over 945 million broadband users, and a thriving fintech ecosystem powered by UPI, the country has woven the Internet into nearly every aspect of daily life. From government subsidies and healthcare to education, logistics, and AI development, India is embracing the tools of a hyperconnected world. Its ambitions stretch even further—toward 6G, domestic AI models, and digitally empowered rural economies.

But as this transformation accelerates, it brings with it a quiet and growing threat: invisible, constant, and largely unmonitored.

Hidden Digital Threats Across India

India’s digital infrastructure, while expansive, is increasingly vulnerable. Cybercriminals have shifted their attention from just big tech companies and banks to rural CSCs, small businesses, and even the smartphones of ordinary citizens. They are exploiting the very platforms designed to empower India’s future—Aadhaar-linked services, government portals, online banking apps—and doing so using methods that rarely make headlines but cause real damage.

Infected phones and desktops are being quietly harvested for saved passwords, OTP tokens, Aadhaar scans, PAN numbers, and cryptocurrency wallets. These credentials are bundled into data dumps called “infostealer logs” and sold by the thousands on Telegram channels and dark web marketplaces. Prices can be as low as Rs 250 for a government email login with working credentials.

This is not fiction. In one real case, a malware infection on a state government officer’s laptop resulted in access to GST return portals, budget memos, and Zoho Mail credentials—none of which were noticed until the log was publicly sold. In another case, farmers in Uttar Pradesh installed a fake fertiliser subsidy app, draining their linked bank accounts in minutes.

These attacks are no longer sophisticated zero-day exploits. They rely on volume, automation, and human error, such as clicking the wrong link, installing a fake APK, and reusing passwords across platforms. The threat is national, but the infections begin at the edges: in unpatched Android phones, cracked software, and rural Internet kiosks running outdated systems.

India’s digital transformation has inadvertently created the world’s largest exposed surface area, rich in data, short on defences. And yet, there is no national platform that systematically monitors these threats in real-time. Breach disclosures are rare. Most victims—whether small businesses, school networks, or block-level officials—do not even know they have been compromised.

Why National Cyber Intelligence is Urgent

What India lacks is not ambition, but visibility. This is where cyber intelligence comes in. Cyber intelligence differs from traditional cybersecurity. While cybersecurity protects systems through firewalls, antivirus software, and updates, cyber intelligence monitors attackers. It tracks patterns, identifies stolen credentials, watches dark web chatter, and traces malware infrastructure. It does not wait for the attack to succeed—it anticipates it.

A truly national cyber intelligence platform for India would function like a digital nervous system—quietly observing, alerting, and adapting in real time. It would scan the dark web and Telegram channels for Indian domain leaks, Aadhaar records, and phishing kits before they are weaponised. It would sift through infostealer logs to detect infection patterns across public offices, small businesses, and schools, revealing hotspots of compromise.

At a deeper layer, it would monitor telecom and cloud infrastructure for suspicious activity, catching malware communications or unauthorised data flows as they happen. India’s telecom backbone—spanning over a billion mobile connections and hundreds of millions of broadband users—is both the engine of digital growth and a high-risk attack vector.

Threat actors frequently exploit telecom channels through smishing, SIM-swapping, malicious configuration updates, and malware-infected app links delivered over mobile data. These vectors often bypass traditional defences, making telecom providers critical stakeholders in the country’s cyber intelligence ecosystem. By integrating telecom telemetry—such as DNS anomalies, traffic spikes, or location spoofing—into a national monitoring system, India can catch infections at their source and disrupt threats as they propagate.

It would also trace cryptocurrency wallets used in ransomware payouts or online fraud, helping law enforcement follow the money. And it would profile the methods of known threat actors—like North Korea’s Lazarus or Chinese-linked APTs—giving Indian defenders the ability not just to react, but to anticipate and disrupt.

Countries like Estonia, Singapore, and the US already operate such platforms. India—despite leading the world in mobile and payments adoption—has yet to build its comprehensive threat intelligence backbone.

In the meantime, threats continue to grow more sophisticated.

Telecom and Cloud Security Risks

The most alarming shift now is the dependence on foreign cloud infrastructure. Today, over 85% of India’s public cloud workloads are hosted by three foreign firms: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. While they offer reliable and scalable services, their backend control, metadata analytics, and GPU compute provisioning lie outside India’s jurisdiction.

Even if data is stored in India, it can still be accessed, mirrored, or used to train foreign AI systems unless it is tightly regulated. For example, a bank’s fraud behaviour analytics or a state’s health data model could indirectly enrich foreign language or behaviour models, without explicit consent or compensation.

Add to this the current race for AI supremacy. Training modern language models requires enormous computing power, typically delivered via rented GPUs. India currently relies on GPU-as-a-Service offerings from abroad. This makes its AI dreams vulnerable to supply shocks, pricing volatility, or geopolitical friction.

To become a true digital power, India must control not just its data but also the intelligence that surrounds it.

Building a National Cyber Intelligence Backbone

So, what needs to happen? First, India should establish a centralised cyber intelligence fusion centre that integrates data from CERT-In, NTRO, MeitY, and telecoms, while working alongside private sector providers and ethical hacking communities. Second, there must be a mandatory breach disclosure law for all government departments and private companies handling sensitive user data. Silence only benefits attackers.

Third, public-private funding must support Indian startups and academic institutions working on malware analysis, OSINT, adversary simulation, and dark web monitoring. These firms exist, but they need scale and integration. Fourth, cloud and AI infrastructure must be regulated strategically, with audit rights, compute quotas, and metadata transparency built into any data centre licensing or GPU provisioning.

And finally, grassroots efforts matter too. Rural CSCs need lightweight endpoint defence. MSMEs should receive alerts if their credentials are found in stealer dumps. Schools should teach cyber hygiene in conjunction with computer literacy.

Cyber intelligence must not be a luxury for elite institutions. It must be a public good, built into the arteries of India’s digital economy.

India’s path to digital greatness is already being paved. But it will remain fragile unless its foundations are monitored, understood, and protected. Sovereignty today is not just about borders or laws; it is about code, visibility, and foresight. The question for India is no longer whether to invest in cyber intelligence; the question is how to do so effectively.

The author is the Founder and CEO of PygmalionGlobal. He collaborates with multiple cybersecurity companies, including NPCore in South Korea, and engages with government agencies and conglomerates across Asia.