Dr. Gyan Pathak

Ransomware cyber attack on C-Edge, forcing the joint venture fintech platform of the State Bank of India (SBI) and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) down, affecting about 300 co-operative and regional banks for the last three days should be a wake-up call for India, in the backdrop of the technology being the most targeted of Industries in the country, and also because it aims to roll out the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 soon.

Established in 2010, C-Edge has grown up to become a significant player in India’s fintech landscape, but has been compromised now ironically for the cybersecurity services it boasted about which included threat detection, vulnerability assessment, and incident response, to protect banks from cyberattacks.

The ransomware attack has forced the temporary shutdown of payment systems of the affected banks. The customers of these banks have not been able to access payment services like ATMs or UPIs, though other banking services are functioning normally and no financial loss has yet been reported.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has said in a statement that C-Edge Technologies … has been possibly impacted by a ransomware attack impacting a few of their systems leading to the temporary isolation of C-Edge from accessing NPCI-operated retail payment systems.

Online transactions, such as RTGS and UPI payments, has been affected said Chairman Dileep Sanghani of the National Cooperative Union of India. Money is deducted from the sender’s account but does not get credited in the receiver’s account.

Restoration work and a mandatory security review is underway. To protect the broader payments system, necessary precautions, including isolation of the C-Edge system, have been implemented, officials have said.

However, these assurances are not enough since the very breach indicates that weaknesses remained in the system despite the fact that India has been the chief target of cyberattacks in the recent years, due to fast and wider deployment and use of digital technologies in the country.

Two reports published only a couple of days ago have suggested the growing menace of cyber attack in India. “India Breach Report” by Falcon Feeds, an entity of cyber-security firm Technisanct had reported that India witnessed 593 cases of cyberattacks – 388 data breaches, 107 data leaks, 39 ransomware group activities and 59 cases of illegal sales of access credentials or leaks in the last six months of 2024.

Education, government and technology sector were the primary targets, while healthcare, banking, manufacturing, and consumer services also faced severe attacks.

The CEO of Technisanct, Nandkishore Harikumar, has said, “This evolving cyber threat landscape in the nation, particularly within critical sectors like government and education, is a stark reminder that it is high time we need to create a protocol to address this issue.”

“No sector is immune,” Nandkishore said. “As the digital frontier expands, safeguarding data and information will be paramount and proactive measures must be prioritized to protect our nation’s digital assets.”

The report emphasized the imperative for robust cyber-security measures to protect critical infrastructure and sensitive data. Regular security audits, employee training, data encryption and robust incident response plans.

Though, officials have claimed no financial loss in the present ransomware attack, it does not certainly include the financial cost. Then another report by IBM, has just pointed out that the average financial impact of data breaches in India has increased to a record high of 19.5 crore in 2024.

The IBM cost of a data breach report says that this represents a 39 per cent rise since 2020 and a 9 per cent increase from the previous year. Further, 70 per cent of breached organisations worldwide experience disruption while in India, lost business, which includes operational downtime, customer attrition, and reputational harm, which contributed to a nearly 45 per cent surge in breach costs.

Notification expenses increased by 19 per cent compared to the previous year, the IBM report said. Detection and escalation costs also marginally increased about 7 per cent. Moreover, the complexity of breach investigation continues to account for the largest portion of breach costs in the country.

Phishing and stolen or compromised credentials have been identified by the IBM report as the most prevalent initial attack types in India, each responsible for 18 per cent of incidents. Cloud misconfiguration was 12 per cent. Business email compromise emerged as the most expensive root cause, with an average cost of Rs215 million per breach.

Social engineering with Rs 213 million and phishing Rs209 million also contributed significantly to breach costs. About 34 per cent data breaches in India involved public clouds, with an average cost of Rs 227 million per breach.

As far the breach cost is concerned ,Technology industry was the second biggest sufferer of cyber attacks at Rs 243 million average cost per breach. The entire Industrial sector average cost was Rs255 million, the report revealed. It was followed by pharmaceutical sector at Rs 221 million.

Vice president of Technology, IBM India & South Asia, Viswanath Ramaswamy has says, “The findings from this year’s IBM Const of a Data Breach Report reinforce the importance of a proactive and integrated AI-powered approach to cybersecurity.

As cyber-attacks gain pace and complexity, their impact on organisations becomes multi-dimensional, affecting reputational, financial and operational aspects.”

An earlier report by Zscaler published only a few months ago in April 2024, had ranked India the third-largest country for fishing attack after US and UK, with its technology sector facing nearly 33 per cent of all such strikes in 2023, marking it as the most targeted industry.

The finance and insurance sector has become the prime target of cyber attackers and witnessed the highest number of phishing attempts in 2023.