Cyber incidents up 3.5x since 2019, nearly 4,000 a day in 2022

In 2022, cyber attacks on government agencies more than doubled to nearly 200,000

Nearly 4,000 cyber incidents a day were recorded in India in 2022.

Overall cybersecurity incidents are rising in the country, with as many as 1.4 million incidents being reported in Calendar 2022 (chart 1).

A ransomware attack on Sun Pharmaceutical Industries affected its business operations, according to the company’s regulatory filing on March 26. Attacks on Indian companies have risen the past few years, shows data shared by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, in the Rajya Sabha earlier this year. In 2022, Indian firms suffered 198 ransomware and cyber-attacks. In comparison, 23 incidents were recorded in 2019.

Data shows that cyber attacks on government agencies, institutions and undertakings have also risen significantly. In 2022, cyber attacks on government agencies more than doubled to 192,439 (chart 2).

Last week, Meenakshi Lekhi, minister of state in the ministry of external affairs, shared in the Lok Sabha that “the government is working, including through international cooperation, towards protecting information, infrastructure in cyber space, building capabilities to prevent and respond to cyber threats, reduce vulnerabilities and minimise damage from cyber incidence, through a combination of institutional structures, people, processes, technology and cooperation”.

According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) annual reports, overall security incidents include website intrusion and malware propagation, issues related to viruses or malicious code, phishing, distributed denial of service attacks, website defacements, unauthorised network scanning activities, among others.