Cyberattacks are now ranked as the fifth global risk, a threat more significant than supply chain disruptions or armed conflict. In this era of growing cyber threats, organizations must safeguard their crown jewels—critical data and assets.

Rahul Modgil, CISO of EPFO, stressed the importance of a defined defense strategy. “Considering the enormous amounts of data, a cybersecurity framework should be set with accountability for various clearly defined roles. Security is a layered and proactive approach,” he said. He further added, “We should call ourselves Chief Information Security Leaders. I make my team present a geopolitical scenario, mark the threats, and extrapolate to our organization to come up with solutions.”

As organizations grapple with increasingly harmful events, the focus shifts to predicting and preventing these threats. Rajesh Singhal, CISO of HDFC Securities, emphasized the growing role of AI in cybersecurity. “AI is a must. We have to predict the attack and also the action taken to remediate. It should be a mixture of AI and human,” Singhal stated.

Shailendra Kothavale, Chief Compliance & Risk Officer at Aditya Birla Insurance, highlighted AI’s ethical use, saying, “The first question we had was—how can we use AI in cybersecurity? How can we use it as a tool?”

With the rise of threats like WormGPT and FraudGPT, Sachin Khalap, Practice Head at TCS, underscored the need for quick recovery. “Despite getting hit, how quickly you recover is key. Training and covering the fundamentals are crucial before investing in advanced tools,” Khalap advised.

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