October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. One question that is uppermost in the minds of the people is: How do we stay resilient and cybersafe in a world that is becoming increasingly digital and vulnerable? As usual cyberthreats are evolving rapidly and innovations like artificial intelligence, cloud services, and data analytics have their own share of opportunities and risks. As cybersecurity gains global attention, experts share their perspectives on cyber awareness and cyber resilience.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Here’s what some industry experts say:
Rahul S Kurkure, Founder and Director, Cloud.in
“Cloud and AI adoption are transforming businesses by offering unmatched scalability, efficiency, collaboration, innovation, and cost savings while driving strategic growth. With organizations becoming increasingly cloud- and AI-powered, cloud security is taking top priority, too. Beyond adhering to the shared responsibility model, organizations and government agencies must invest in adopting emerging technologies and staying ahead of evolving cloud security trends. Cloud security today requires a multi-layered, AI-driven approach—encompassing monitoring, threat detection, data encryption, multi-factor authentication, zero-trust frameworks, and regulatory compliance. At Cloud.in, we believe Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a timely reminder for organizations to integrate AI-powered cyber defense with human vigilance to ensure a secure and sustainable digital future for all.”
Gaurav Mohan, VP Sales, SAARC & Middle East, NETSCOUT
“The latest NETSCOUT Threat Intelligence Report 1H2025 reveals a staggering 8 million cyberattacks worldwide, with India targeted by multiple hacktivist groups and facing up to 2,000 attacks each day. This relentless evolution of DDoS threats, where attackers leverage AI, automation, and reconnaissance tools and strike with surgical precision, demands equally sophisticated defenses that are AI-powered. Security leaders must deploy adaptive intelligence-driven defenses that evolve alongside the threats. This October, as every year, our brightest minds at NETSCOUT promote the conversation round Cybersecurity Awareness Month by sharing resources and expertise on how people, organizations, and companies can improve their cyber literacy, keep up with the newest technologies, and stay safe online.”
Chetan Jain, Managing Director, Inspira Enterprise
“The cybersecurity landscape is becoming increasingly complex, with advanced technologies and new challenges creating a dynamic threat environment. During Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Inspira Enterprise reiterates the importance of AI in enhancing proactive cyber defense strategies, which include securing AI models and their ecosystems as well. Organizations have to leverage offensive cybersecurity strategies and assess preparedness regularly, in addition to nurturing a security-first culture while achieving cybersecurity compliance. At a broader level, coordinated efforts between the public sector, private organizations, and cybersecurity defenders can successfully block state-sponsored threats and hacktivism driven by geopolitical events. This ensures no disruption to all services, including the essentials and life-saving ones.”
Pravir Dahiya, Chief Technology Officer, Tata Teleservices
“In today’s digital landscape, cybersecurity has become a core business imperative that drives resilience and trust. At Tata Tele Business Services, we believe that strong password hygiene, multifactor authentication and phishing awareness form the foundation of a robust security posture. As cyber threats continue to evolve, so must our defences. Implementing comprehensive password policies, deploying MFA across critical access points and nurturing a culture of scam awareness are essential practices that strengthen every layer of defence. The theme ‘Stay Safe Online’ is a timely reminder that security begins with informed choices. By embedding these fundamentals into daily practice, businesses safeguard their digital infrastructure and build enduring trust with customers and partners.”
Shakeel Khan, Regional Vice President and Country Manager, Okta
“The pace of India’s digital economy is nothing short of extraordinary, and as we lead this rapid growth, the need for proactive cybersecurity has never been more urgent.
Identity is the first and most reliable line of defence in the evolving landscape. Recent industry data shows a critical gap emerging: while an estimated 80% of Indian organisations are developing autonomous AI agents, only 10% have a mature security strategy to manage them. This highlights a clear need for a more comprehensive approach.
At Okta, we are committed to strengthening India’s cybersecurity posture. We are enabling secure access for every user, on every device, and across every application, helping organisations protect their people, data, and systems.
As India continues its digital transformation, our focus remains on building lasting trust in the nation’s digital future.”
Sanjay Agrawal, CTO and Head of Presales, India and SAARC, Hitachi Vantara
“The businesses that will thrive in 2025 aren’t those with the biggest security budgets, but those that position security as an innovation catalyst. Cybersecurity today is the cornerstone of digital progress. As per global estimates, nearly 60 percent of small and medium enterprises experience at least one cyber incident annually, often impacting trust and growth. With increasing cloud adoption and connected infrastructure, the ability to secure data in real time has become business critical.
At Hitachi Vantara, we are helping organizations strengthen their cyber resilience through intelligent data infrastructure, AI-driven threat detection, and secure hybrid cloud solutions. We believe cybersecurity encompasses both protection and the ability to respond with preparedness and agility. By integrating advanced technology, data-driven insights, and a culture of security awareness, small and medium enterprises can transform security into a growth enabler. Cybersecurity must not be an afterthought but an integral part of an enterprise’s strategy and innovation journey.
Our goal is to ensure that every organization, regardless of size, can pursue digital transformation securely, positioning them for success in an increasingly connected world.”
Rohan Vaidya, Area Vice President, India & SAARC, CyberArk
“As India accelerates its digital transformation journey, powered by AI, automation, and cloud-first strategies, a new and largely invisible threat is growing: the explosion of machine identities. From application workloads to RPA bots and microservices, machine identities now far outnumber human ones, yet they remain severely under-protected.
Findings from the CyberArk 2025 Identity Security Landscape report underscore the above urgency. In India, 77% of organisations admit they prioritise speed and efficiency over cybersecurity, and 68% highlight AI and cloud as key sources of unmanaged access risk. Perhaps most concerning is that 85% are now facing increased pressure from insurers and regulators to secure privileged access, and yet machine identities with sensitive or privileged access remain mostly uncontrolled.
This Cybersecurity Awareness Month’s theme, “Secure Our World: Protecting Digital Identities Across All Fronts,” draws our attention to how critical it is for Indian enterprises to look beyond just human-centric security. Alarmingly, nearly a third of machine identities today have privileged or sensitive access, meaning even minor missteps such as an expired TLS certificate or orphaned credentials can lead to major outages or breaches.
To get ahead of escalating identity-based threats, there is a requirement for embedding Privileged Access Management (PAM) within a holistic identity security strategy that provides complete visibility, proactive risk mitigation, and seamless operational continuity across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. AI and automation are redefining our digital future, but without identity security at the core, we risk building that future on unstable ground.”
Rizwan Patel, Global Head Cloud, Infosec and Emerging Technologies, Altimetrik
“National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2025 arrives as enterprises confront a fundamentally transformed threat landscape. This year’s theme, Cyber Jagrit Bharat, translates to a Cyber Safe India, highlighting that cybersecurity is both a national priority and an enterprise imperative. The cyber environment in India has reached a critical point, with unprecedented volume and sophistication of attacks targeting organizations and individuals. In 2024, India recorded 369.01 million malware detections across 8.44 million endpoints, averaging 702 detections per minute, according to the India Cyber Threat Report 2025 by the Data Security Council of India and Seqrite.
AI-powered attacks are escalating rapidly, enabling cybercriminals to automate and scale operations while evading detection through sophisticated phishing campaigns, deepfakes, and adaptive malware. Shadow AI deployments, supply chain compromises, and insider threats have created attack surfaces beyond the reach of traditional defenses. As India’s technology sector races toward a US$300 bn revenue milestone by FY 2026, organizations face immense pressure to strengthen security intelligence across every business process.
Altimetrik believes that cybersecurity must be treated as a continuous business enabler rather than a compliance exercise. Our AI-first engineering model integrates governance, platform security, and threat intelligence into enterprise transformation journeys. AI-augmented defenses operate seamlessly across cloud infrastructures, legacy systems, and emerging technologies, while maintaining human oversight over critical decisions.
Cyber Jagrit Bharat is a call for shared accountability where security becomes a competitive differentiator. Enterprises that combine AI-driven intelligence with vigilant governance will not only withstand evolving threats but gain the trust, agility, and confidence to lead India’s accelerating digital economy.”
Attila Torok, Chief Information Security Officer, GoTo
“Cybersecurity isn’t just foundational—it’s the only thing standing between business continuity and chaos. With work happening across fragmented networks and devices, the attack surface is everywhere. That’s why security must be embedded into every role, not siloed in IT. It’s now a shared responsibility.
Modern business resilience means not just surviving ransomware, but anticipating disruptions—whether it’s AI-driven threats, infrastructure failures, or human error. AI brings scale and speed to both defense and attack. Organizations use it to detect anomalies and automate response, but also face adversaries using it to craft deepfakes, launch precision phishing, and exploit non-deterministic behavior.
Perimeter defenses don’t cut it anymore. That’s why businesses must also invest in zero trust architectures and build security into every layer—from identity to endpoint. But tech alone isn’t enough. A well-trained workforce, equipped with the right tools and empowered to act, is the strongest defense we have.
Security awareness is good. Operational readiness is better. Let’s turn knowledge into action and build a workforce that’s not just informed—but resilient.”
Balaji Rao, Area Vice President, India & SAARC, Commvault
“As organisations focus on strengthening their cyber foundations, it’s clear that business leaders must pay close attention to social engineering, the Achilles’ heel of every organization’s cybersecurity. With the help of artificial intelligence, cybercriminals can now alter voices, accents, and languages in real time, making malicious intent harder to detect. Compounding this, many employees receive minimal cybersecurity training, leaving them unable to identify sophisticated threats. This training gap also impacts ransomware defense, which continues dominating headlines.
Organizations can no longer rely solely on prevention; they must ensure rapid recovery with minimal downtime. Traditional backups are proving insufficient as cybercriminals infiltrate them, forcing security teams to prioritize clean recovery into guaranteed malware-free environments.
AI and automation come at a time when cybersecurity engineers are often tasked with looking beyond traditional perimeter security and thinking more broadly about every phase of the attack, from protection and detection to response and recovery. Engineers can replace or enhance time-intensive manual log monitoring analysis, rapidly identify suspicious patterns and anomalies, categorize incidents, and classify threats, including often hard-to-detect AI-driven phishing threats, and use AI to determine which backups to use in recovery.
True cyber resilience lies not only in preventing breaches but in the ability to recover quickly and continue operations seamlessly, combining stronger human defenses with automated recovery strategies. Building these capabilities is essential for a vigilant, resilient, and cyber-aware India, embodying CyberJagritBharat.”
Venkatesh Subramaniam, CISO, Mindsprint
“As AI blurs the lines between innovation and risk, and penetrates into every business function, cybersecurity can no longer remain a reactive function, it must evolve into a predictive discipline. The rise of shadow AI makes governance and responsible innovation more critical than ever. At Mindsprint, we’re embedding resilience into every layer of transformation so that enterprises can harness AI confidently driving growth, trust, and long-term digital advantage.” – Venkatesh Subramaniam, CISO, Mindsprint.
Jayesh Shah, Director, Orient Technologies Limited
“In today’s hyperconnected business environment, cybersecurity is no longer just an IT concern, it is a core business imperative. As India advances toward a digital-first economy, regular vulnerability assessment is essential to identify, prioritize, and address risks before they escalate into threats. At Orient Technologies, we believe a Cyber Safe India begins with awareness and proactive defense, where enterprises continuously strengthen their cybersecurity posture through assessment, training, and innovation. The goal is simple yet vital: to stay one step ahead in a world that never stops evolving.”
Norman Gottschalk, Global CIO & CISO, Visionet Systems
“In an age where even deception can be AI-generated, trust has become our most valuable digital currency. As cyber attackers increasingly harness generative AI, the digital battlefield is no longer just about firewalls and encryption, it’s about authenticity. This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we are reminded that the lines between real and fabricated are blurring faster than ever, demanding sharper vigilance and smarter defense strategies.
In this evolving landscape, the human-in-the-loop approach isn’t optional, it’s essential. AI may detect anomalies at scale, but it lacks the discernment, context, and ethical judgment needed to navigate complex, high-stakes situations. We cannot afford to hand over control to machines without accountability.
As cyber threats grow more adaptive, so must we. The future of cybersecurity lies in the synergy between AI precision and human intuition- a partnership that ensures not just protection, but trust in an increasingly synthetic world.” ——–– Norman Gottschalk, Global CIO & CISO, Visionet Systems
