As India prepares to host the India AI Impact Summit from Monday, February 16, it stands at a defining moment in its digital governance journey. India’s AI strategy is based on a clear principle: Artificial Intelligence must be safe, reliable and accountable to serve as the foundation for inclusive and sustainable development. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, AI is being increasingly deployed to increase economic productivity, strengthen public service delivery, and deepen citizen-centric governance. Also, security by design has emerged as a core pillar of this strategy, recognizing that as India’s digital footprint expands, so does the responsibility to proactively secure cyberspace against emerging and sophisticated threats.
AI-enabled capabilities can be exploited by malicious actors through automated cyberattacks, deepfakes, data manipulation, and intelligent malware. For a digitally advancing country like India, trust is not an abstract ideal but a functional requirement for AI adoption on a population scale. Innovation cannot sustain without trust. Therefore, the defining challenge of this decade is not whether nations adopt AI, but how governments institutionalize safety, security, and accountability to ensure AI is in the public interest.
CERT-In handled more than 29.44 lakh cyber incidents last year. These figures underline both the scale, awareness and institutionally active reporting mechanisms of India’s digital ecosystem. India ranked second globally in phishing attacks in 2025, reflecting the scale and sophistication of social engineering threats. In the Global Cyber ​​Security Outlook 2025 published by the World Economic Forum (WEF), CERT-In is highlighted for the deployment of AI-powered situational awareness systems to analyze and detect 2.2 billion malicious domains and phishing activities impacting 6,95,000 users in 2024. A national priority rather than a regional concern.
To address the opportunities and risks arising from rapid AI adoption, India has expressed an approach that emphasizes the development and deployment of secure, reliable and resilient digital systems while leveraging emerging technologies for inclusive growth. This approach is reflected in the Digital India program and India’s emerging AI policy discussion, where cybersecurity, resilience and trust are positioned as foundational principles guiding technological innovation and governance. Security is not an afterthought to innovation; This is the foundation upon which reliable AI systems are built. Accomplishing this trust-first approach requires strong institutional custodianship of cybersecurity.
Within India’s broader emphasis on building trust and security in its digital ecosystem, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) plays a central role in strengthening cyber resilience. CERT-In is the national nodal agency for cyber security incident response, responsible for the collection, analysis and dissemination of information on cyber incidents as well as issuing security advisories, guidelines and vulnerability notes. Through continuous threat monitoring and an automated cyber threat exchange platform, running a command and control center to share real-time information on existing and potential cyber threats with organizations covering all sectors, coordination among stakeholders and through capacity building initiatives, CERT-In contributes to safeguarding India’s digital infrastructure and strengthening public trust in digital systems, including those increasingly shaped by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.
AI will be an integral part of this mission. Machine learning and advanced analytics enable real-time detection of anomalous activity, rapid correlation of threat indicators across different sectors, and early warning of coordinated or large-scale cyber threats. These capabilities allow analysts to process terabytes of threat data at machine speed, ensuring AI-enabled systems remain secure, reliable, and worthy of citizen trust, thereby enhancing national preparedness and response capabilities.
Going forward, India’s cybersecurity posture will be guided by a whole-of-government approach that integrates AI-powered threat intelligence across ministries, sectors, digital public infrastructure and state governments. The emphasis will be on anticipatory security, detecting, preventing and neutralizing threats before they turn into systemic disruptions. This approach recognizes that trustworthy AI cannot exist in silos, but requires coordinated institutional vigilance. Strengthening institutional coordination, standardization and curated information sharing will be central to this effort.
In recent years, the Indian government has taken decisive steps to embed artificial intelligence at the core of national development. IndiaAI Mission with a planned outlay of more than ₹Rs 10,300 crore, clearly structured around seven pillars, including compute capacity, foundational and generative AI models, high-quality datasets, application development, talent and skills, startup financing and safe and trusted AI, reflects a comprehensive and coordinated approach to building sovereign AI capabilities while controlling AI at population scale. Importantly, safety, accountability and security have been embedded in the IndiaAI mission as a dedicated pillar and cross-cutting priorities, ensuring that scale and innovation do not come at the cost of trust.
Under these IndiaAI Mission pillars, the government has operationalized platforms such as Aikosh, which hosts thousands of non-personal datasets; Supported the development of indigenous foundational and language models such as Sarvam-1; and launched the establishment of AI Centers of Excellence in priority areas including health care, agriculture and urban sustainability, supported by an initial grant. ₹Allocation of Rs 500 crore in Union Budget 2025-26.
These interventions represent not only technological progress but also strategic state capacity building. India already ranks among the fastest growing AI markets globally. This trajectory is underlined by the Stanford University AI Index, which ranks India third worldwide after the United States and China based on parameters such as AI research output, talent depth, investment and deployment, estimating that the country’s AI industry could reach $17 billion by 2027. Sustaining this growth, however, largely depends on maintaining trust in AI-enabled systems.
Government-led skills initiatives such as YUVA – AI for All, led by MeitY, are ensuring that the benefits of AI adoption are broad-based, inclusive and regionally distributed. By equipping young citizens with foundational and practical AI skills, these programs are strengthening India’s human capital for a data-driven economy.
Globally, cybersecurity is increasingly being shaped by automated threats and self-developed malware. In response, India is promoting AI-assisted threat intelligence, continuous monitoring and predictive security across all sectors, strengthening incident response and threat intelligence, with 94% of enterprises now using AI-enabled security tools. These measures strengthen the credibility of India’s digital and AI infrastructure.
Going forward, the government will prioritize mainstreaming AI-enabled security across public digital platforms and critical infrastructure along with institutional capacity building to ensure policy and enforcement keep pace with technological change. The objective is clear: to ensure that India’s AI-powered digital ecosystem remains resilient, trusted and sovereign.
At the same time, the government is aware of the risks posed by AI, including adverse manipulation and misuse of synthetic materials. There is a need for predictive governance to address these challenges. Accordingly, MeitY has strengthened IT regulations to curb deepfakes, hold platforms accountable and ensure timely removals, further strengthening public trust in digital platforms.
Public awareness and capacity building are at the heart of cyber resilience. A secure digital India depends not only on technology but also on an aware citizenry supported through national awareness initiatives and sustained collaboration with state governments, industry and academia.
The India AI Impact Summit reaffirms that AI and cybersecurity are inseparable pillars of India’s digital future. Trust connects both innovation and impact. As AI deepens its role in governance and citizen services, governments are realizing their responsibility to ensure trust and resilience. India’s digital public infrastructure shows that large-scale innovation can co-exist with strong security measures. CERT-In’s trust-centric, security-first mandate ensures that India’s AI future is secure by design, resilient by default, and firmly anchored in the national interest.
The author is currently Director General at CERT-In.
