India faces 3,100 weekly cyber attacks, education sector worst hit amid AI surge

The education sector is the worst affected, with more than 7,600 attacks on each institution per week. Even government organisations face 4,900 plus weekly attacks, and business enterprises register 3,747 service disruptions by bad actors.

India is seeing rapid, sustained growth in the number of people on the internet. As per the latest report, it has more than 950 million active users. However, it is also registering a record surge in digital crimes, and with the advent of generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI), the threat actors are coming up with more sophisticated cyber attacks.

On average, India is facing 3,100 hacking attempts, more than two percent than the previous year, reported Check Point, a leading cyber security watchdog.

In particular, education sector is the worst affected, with more than 7,684 attacks on each institution per week. Even government organisations face 4,912 weekly attacks, and business enterprises register 3,747 service disruptions by bad actors.

"AI is changing the mechanics of cyber attacks, not just their volume. We are seeing attackers move from purely manual operations to increasingly higher levels of automation, with early signs of autonomous techniques emerging," Lotem Finkelstein, vice president of Research, Check Point Software.

Backed by AI tech, cyber attacks are increasingly becoming unpredictable and needs serious shift in strategy for organisations to adopt a prevention-first approach. And this starts with every employee developing digital hygiene when using office laptops and phones. They should be strictly used for official work and avoid personal use.

Strictly follow these rules, including keeping the device updated with the latest version, using strong alphanumeric passwords (including special characters), don't venture in darkweb, and reducing digital clutter by removing unused applications.

Also, ensure that the device has a good anti-virus application developed by reputed firms like Check Point, Kaspersky and others.

And, the companies have put more investment in improving cybersecurity, have secure communication channels and well-protected backup of the company's trade secrets in cloud storage servers hosted by reputed service providers like Zoho Corp, Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

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