Indian Banks Raise Cybersecurity Spending as AI Threats Mature

The report identifies AI asymmetry as a defining risk: vulnerability discovery, exploit generation, and attack orchestration that once required specialist teams and substantial resources can increasingly be performed faster by lower-resource actors. Economic Times BFSI reported that attacks are combining AI, stolen identities, and manipulated payment workflows to resemble legitimate customer activity.

The same reporting describes banks adopting AI-led fraud detection alongside zero-trust controls, micro-segmentation, identity management, cyber monitoring, cloud security, and vulnerability assessment. The official report calls for continuous risk assessment and coordinated response rather than relying only on periodic security checks.

Economic Times BFSI reported that Punjab National Bank allocated about 20% of its FY27 technology budget, or roughly Rs 7-8 billion, to cybersecurity. The publication said that was more than 50% above the prior year and that the bank could increase the allocation if needed.

The Reserve Bank of India has also discussed AI, geopolitical risk, and expected-credit-loss implementation with bank chief executives, according to Economic Times BFSI. The publication reported that the central bank circulated a draft AI-governance framework for regulated entities.

For security and ML teams in financial services, the evidence points to a combined controls problem. Fraud models need identity and session telemetry, payment-workflow monitoring, access segmentation, and incident response around them. The official report's 18-month roadmap also emphasizes stronger authentication, machine-identity inventories, adversarial testing of payment workflows, cloud identity controls, and continuous assurance as the threat environment evolves.