Cyberattacks on organizations based in India are doubling each year, a rate significantly exceeding the global average. This trend underscores the swiftly increasing risk confronting companies and government agencies across South Asia.
According to a quarterly report by Indusface, a managed application security provider, organizations in India faced approximately 1.2 billion attacks in the third quarter of 2024. This marks an increase from around 600 million during the same period in 2023. The report noted that about 377 million denial-of-service (DoS) incidents and 215 million bot-based requests were directed at API services and web servers using the company’s Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) service.
According to Ashish Tandon, the founder and CEO of Indusface, attackers traditionally relied on bot-driven denial-of-service (DoS) attacks against businesses. However, they are now evolving their tactics, he stated in a comment to Dark Reading.
“Attackers are increasingly concentrating on exploiting websites and APIs through various attack strategies,” he stated. “The advent of large language models (LLMs) has drastically reduced the difficulty of carrying out vulnerability attacks, as evidenced by our data showing a triple-digit increase in these incidents.”
India, the third-largest economy in Asia, experienced a 5.4% growth rate overall in the third quarter. This economic expansion has made Indian organizations more attractive targets for attackers, as indicated by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in their “2025 Global Digital Trust Insights” report (India edition). According to PwC’s findings, 44% of Indian businesses have endured data breaches costing at least $500,000 over the past three years. As a result of these cyber threats and incidents, Indian executives are now placing greater emphasis on cybersecurity; with 61% ranking it among their top three priorities when addressing potential risks.
According to the report by PwC India, security executives feel particularly unprepared for major cyber-risks such as cloud-related threats, attacks on connected products, social engineering incidents, and software supply chain compromises.
Cyberattacks in India Accelerating
According to Indusface, cyberattacks surged in the second quarter of 2024, with global incidents increasing by 105% and attacks on India-based organizations skyrocketing by 115%. Although the number of cyberattacks continued to rise in the third quarter, their rate of growth slowed down globally. In comparison to a year earlier, there was only a 26% increase worldwide during this period.
In India, attacks surged dramatically, rising by 92% compared to the same quarter in the previous year. This information was revealed in the company’s “State of Application Security” report for Q3 2024. In August, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cautioned companies that their growing reliance on digital technologies brings heightened risks.
“The company stated that although the DDoS attacks in India were similar to those of last year. There was a significant increase in bot and vulnerability attacks. They also noted an overall rise in attacks due to attackers leveraging AI tools.”
“According to the company, a significant factor contributing to [the increase] may be the extensive use of LLM tools like ChatGPT. These tools allow inexperienced hackers to easily access and utilize scripts that can exploit existing vulnerabilities. This increased accessibility has lowered the entry barrier for cybercriminals, leading to an unprecedented surge in vulnerability exploitation.”
Cyber-Risks Heightened for Banks, Utilities
According to a report by Indusface, cyberattackers in India have particularly targeted certain industries. The banking, financial services, and insurance sectors experienced double the number of attacks compared to the global average. Meanwhile, the power and energy sector faced four times as many attacks per website.
Phani Deepak Akella, vice president of marketing for Indusface, suggests that geopolitical motivations are likely behind the targeting of these industries to disrupt essential services. He notes a shift in attack patterns: “Last year saw an increase in DDoS attacks, while this year has seen significant growth in attacks exploiting vulnerabilities.” This change may be attributed to the adoption of large language models (LLMs). Which enable hackers to easily access scripts for exploiting weaknesses like SQL injection.
Companies in India face similar challenges as businesses globally, particularly concerning the management of vulnerabilities within their attack surface area. According to Indusface, only 19% of these companies utilize an automated scanner for API security management. In contrast, 45% rely on manual penetration testing and over a third (36%) do not test their APIs at all.
Moreover, companies are sluggish in updating software to fix vulnerabilities used in serving APIs. Over 30% of critical and high-severity CVSS vulnerabilities remain unpatched more than six months after being identified. The firm highlighted that approximately 5 million attacks have targeted these vulnerable API services.
According to the firm’s report, security misconfigurations and failures in identification and authentication were the leading types of vulnerabilities found in production API servers. Common issues identified in web applications included blind SQL injection, server-side request forgery, and HTML injection problems.
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