One of the biggest challenges for the agencies in 2025 would be fighting cybercrime. While multiple security plans are already in place, officials say that the number of cyber-attacks is likely to increase this year and the battle ahead is going to be a challenging one.
India has emerged as the second most targeted nation in terms of cyber-attacks in the world said a report by CloudSEK. In another report, CloudSEK said that cybercrime may cost India Rs 20,000 crore in 2025. It also says that banking and e-commerce remain the most vulnerable.
A big challenge ahead
Data suggests that in the first nine months of 2024, India list over Rs 11,300 crore in cybercrimes. CloudSEK which analysed data related to over 5,000 defunct malicious website domains and instances of abuse of over 16,000 brands predicted that Indians and Indian companies could lose nearly Rs 20,000 crore in 2025.
The report also notes that the complaints relating to cybercrime are expected to exceed the 25 lakh mark this year. Of these 5 lakhs cases alone would be linked to brand impersonation scams. It also says that the banking and financial service sector is expected to bear the highest impact of around Rs 8,200 crore. The retail and e-commerce sector is expected to take a hit of around Rs 5,800 crore.
In 2025 one could also expect the fraudulent website domains to increase by 65 per cent. These websites are created to cheat people. Fake financial apps could also surge by 83 per cent. Businesses are likely to suffer Rs 24,000 crore win brand equity erosion, the report said.
A report by CloudSEK titled ThreatLandscape Report 2024 said that the country to be targeted the most was the United States, followed by India. Israel was on the third spot.
The threat actors impacted various sectors in India, with the finance and banking system experiencing the highest number of victims. This was followed by the government sector, telecommunication and healthcare and pharma. The last on this list was the education sector.
“Lockbit was the most active ransomware group in India, being responsible for over 20 incidents in the country, followed by more than 15 targets by Killsec. Ransomhub ransomware was responsible for over 12 incidents in the country,” the report said.
One of the biggest issues today that adds to the existing problem is brand impersonation. Users are misled through fake mobile applications or fraudulent use of known brands in a bid to cheat people.
It may be recalled that in 2024 a ship captain aged 75 became a victim of brand impersonation. Scammers had posed as a legitimate firm in order to commit fraud on the captain. The scammers had used a fake trading application that was well designed. They then convinced the victim to make 22 money transactions as a result of which a total of Rs 11.6 crore was lost.
Reports say that such fraudulent applications are likely to increase by 83 per cent this year. Investment scam apps, fake bank KYC/reward apps, designed to steal banking credentials and intercept SMS based OTP for unauthorised transactions and bill payment of government scheme apps are some of the common tactics that the scammers follow, CloudSEK also said.
How Bharat is tackling the problem
The formation of the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (14C) was a major step forward to fight the menace of cybercrimes. While reports have suggested that there would be a major surge in the number of cybercrimes, the Indian agencies are confident of reducing the damage to a large extent.
In 2024, the 14C managed to render useless 69 lakh SIM cards and 132,000 IMEI numbers that were used to commit cybercrimes. Further a total of 59,000 WhatsApp accounts and tools which were used to commit cybercrimes were blocked. This was in addition to 1,700 fraudulent Skype accounts.
Since the biggest sector that is hit in cybercrimes is the baking sector, the government formed the Cyber Fraud Mitigation Centre (CFMC). The job of this agency is to coordinate with the financial intermediaries, banks, IT service providers, payment aggregators and law enforcement agencies. All of them work in tandem in real time to detect financial frauds.
As a result of this coordination nearly 8.6 lakh mule accounts were frozen. Mule accounts are where stolen wealth is stored.
Officials say that one of the most important aspects in fighting cybercrime is to increase awareness among the people. Cybercriminals target gullible people and hence it is important to make them aware.
The government is planning on having several awareness programmes across the country. It has been noticed that people in rural areas are more vulnerable to cybercrime and hence more focus would be on these places. To make the complaint mechanism easier for people, the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System was set up. This led to the government setting up a toll-free number (1930). In addition to this an online portal to report cybercrime too has been set up. This has resulted in 994,000 cases being reported by the people. The reporting of these cases alone has helped the agencies prevent the stealing over Rs 3,431 crore.
