But India\u2019s cybersecurity policy dates to 2013, and experts say attackers are already exploiting the gap.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a hyper-growth market like India, where the government is essentially laying out the red carpet for data centres with the new tax incentives, attackers see a target-rich environment,\u201d said Huzefa Motiwala, senior director, India and SAARC, for global cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks<\/a>. \u201cThey are living inside misconfigured cloud setups and scanning for exposed data at a scale we\u2019ve never seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n Palo Alto\u2019s research found that nearly 29% of cyber incidents it investigated globally now involve cloud systems. The company tracked one recent campaign where attackers scanned over 230 million unique targets looking for exposed data and login credentials.<\/p>\n The threat is not just from criminals. Multiple security firms say nation-state actors are increasingly targeting India’s growing AI infrastructure.<\/p>\n \u201cThese centres house vast troves of sensitive data and advanced AI models, making them strategic assets for espionage and disruption,” she added.<\/p>\n Palo Alto Networks has observed Chinese-linked hacking groups actively targeting cloud credentials in the region. Kaspersky, another cybersecurity firm, blocked over 218,000 spyware attacks in India in the first half of 2025 alone.<\/p>\n The rapid expansion creates a dangerous mix of concentration and complexity, said Jaydeep Singh, general manager for India at Kaspersky. \u201cThe more organisations centralise operations and host critical workloads in cloud environments, the more concentrated and valuable that data becomes. Naturally, this increases the incentive for threat actors to target these environments,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The core problem, experts say, is speed. Companies are building AI systems and cloud infrastructure much faster than security teams can protect them.<\/p>\n \u201cOur research shows that 99% of organisations are using AI-assisted coding to build these environments, but only 18% can actually fix the vulnerabilities at that same speed,\u201d Motiwala said. \u201cWe are effectively building digital skyscrapers on top of quicksand foundations.\u201d<\/p>\n Even when companies follow data storage rules by keeping information inside India, security gaps remain. The biggest risk comes from what experts call \u201cshadow data\u201d, copies of information that get created when teams test new AI systems or move data between different tools.<\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/datacentre.jpg\")
ETtech
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\u201cWe expect critical infrastructure, including data centres, to face more frequent and severe attacks from nation-state actors,\u201d said Apeksha Kaushik, principal analyst at research and advisory firm Gartner. <\/p>\n