As many as 96% of organisations in India experienced a material, business-disrupting cyber incident over the past 12 months, while more than one-third of incidents involved AI-enhanced attacks, according to a Cisco report.
New Delhi, Sep 30 — Cybersecurity risks remain widespread across Indian organisations, with 96% reporting at least one material, business-disrupting cyber incident during the past year, according to Cisco’s Relentless Defense Report.
More than one in three of these incidents involved attacks enhanced by artificial intelligence, highlighting the growing use of AI by cyber threat actors.
The study found that organisational friction, including approval delays, fragmented data and disconnected teams, is creating a greater challenge for strengthening cyber defences than technological limitations.
The report is based on a double-blind survey of 8,000 security professionals across 30 markets, including 1,000 respondents from India.
Indian organisations recorded an average cybersecurity performance score of 66 out of 100, slightly above the global average of 64. However, only 8% of organisations in India qualified for the best-performing category, the same as the global figure.
Operational silos emerged as a major concern. Only 40% of Indian respondents said their security, networking and IT teams operate as a cohesive unit with shared tools and visibility.
Nearly 49% said the security metrics they track are too technical to effectively influence senior executives, while 34% struggled to translate business metrics into information that can support decision-making. Another 26% said they lacked a consistent framework to evaluate security performance.
Data access is also creating challenges. Around 44% of Indian organisations said they spend more time collecting and correlating information from different systems than responding to threats, while 43% said critical insights were missed because of inaccessible data silos.
AI is also playing a larger role in cybersecurity operations. More than nine in ten Indian security professionals reported at least a 25% improvement in detection and response efficiency through AI, while nearly one-third said AI had significantly reduced operational workloads.
Despite these benefits, deployment remains cautious. Around four in ten Indian organisations have extensively deployed AI agents in security operations, with concerns over data exposure, system compromise and third-party management continuing to limit adoption.
