India’s cybersecurity ecosystem is entering a phase where the speed of attacks may soon exceed the speed of human response.
Over the past few weeks, the debate around AI-powered cybersecurity has intensified globally. CERT-In’s latest cybersecurity guidance has pushed organisations toward significantly faster remediation timelines for known exploited vulnerabilities. At the same time, discussions around Anthropic’s experimental cybersecurity model “Mythos” have triggered industry-wide concern over how advanced AI systems could potentially accelerate offensive cyber capabilities. Adding another dimension to the conversation, OpenAI recently introduced a platform designed to help researchers use AI systems to identify software vulnerabilities faster and improve defensive security testing.
Together, these developments point to a larger shift. Artificial intelligence is no longer just improving cybersecurity operations. It is fundamentally changing the speed, scale, and sophistication of both cyber defense and cyber offense.
For enterprises, this creates a difficult reality. Security teams are now operating in an environment where attacks can evolve dynamically, adapt continuously, and move across systems faster than traditional security workflows were designed to handle.
According to Praveen Patil Kulkarni, Director – Security, Risk & Governance at OpenText India, the biggest cybersecurity risk over the next 12 months will not simply be more attacks. It will be the pace at which automated threats can operate inside increasingly fragmented enterprise environments.
“The most pressing risk in the coming year is the speed at which automated threats will move, and the strain this will place on an organisation’s ability to maintain trust across its digital environment,” says Kulkarni.
He warns that attackers are beginning to combine credible impersonation with continuous automated probing of enterprise systems, allowing attacks to unfold long before security teams recognise unusual activity.
“This is no longer a question of simple phishing attempts. It is a situation where malicious activity can evolve in several directions at once, imitating familiar colleagues while quietly testing the strength of internal systems.”
This concern comes at a time when cybersecurity teams globally are already struggling with alert fatigue, fragmented infrastructure, and growing complexity across cloud, SaaS, edge, and hybrid environments. AI now threatens to compress response timelines even further.
The challenge, according to Kulkarni, extends beyond security tooling itself.
“The real vulnerability sits within the scattered data that enterprises have accumulated over time,” he explains. “When attackers can quickly connect information from different corners of the organisation, traditional perimeter security loses its meaning.”
This is increasingly becoming visible across enterprise environments where business-critical data is spread across legacy infrastructure, multi-cloud environments, unmanaged endpoints, and third-party applications. AI systems capable of correlating fragmented information at machine speed could allow attackers to identify weak points far faster than traditional attack methods.
That is one reason why regulators and cybersecurity agencies are shifting focus toward resilience and preparedness instead of purely preventive controls.
CERT-In’s recent emphasis on faster remediation timelines reflects this broader concern that defenders may no longer have the luxury of extended response cycles once vulnerabilities become publicly known or actively exploited.
The industry is also witnessing a strategic shift in how organisations prioritise cybersecurity investments.
Kulkarni believes enterprises should avoid reacting by simply adding more security products into already overcrowded technology stacks.
“Given this environment, the most valuable investments are those that help an organisation build long-term resilience rather than add yet another tool to an already crowded stack,” he says.
Identity and access management, he argues, has become foundational in a world where AI-generated impersonation is becoming increasingly convincing.
“Only a strict verification approach can ensure that the right people are entering the right systems at the right time.”
He also points to the growing importance of intelligent Security Operations Centres capable of identifying behavioural anomalies instead of relying solely on static alerts.
“Security Operations Centres need to evolve to highlight patterns that human analysts might miss on their own,” says Kulkarni. “When teams have behavioural insights and early signals of unusual activity, they can make better decisions without getting lost in repetitive alerts and manual triage.”
Recovery preparedness is emerging as another critical area of focus.
As ransomware, supply chain attacks, and operational disruptions become more sophisticated, resilience is increasingly measured not only by an organisation’s ability to prevent attacks, but also by how quickly it can recover from them.
“Breach costs continue to rise, and the systems that keep a business running are now so interconnected that even a short interruption can create wider problems,” Kulkarni notes.
This places growing importance on cyber recovery, backup integrity, and business continuity capabilities that can restore operations rapidly during a disruption.
The broader message emerging from the industry is clear: cybersecurity can no longer function as an isolated operational layer. Data governance, resilience, recovery, and security operations are becoming deeply interconnected disciplines.
“Protective measures only work well when the underlying information is well organised, properly maintained, and easy to bring back if needed,” says Kulkarni.
As AI capabilities continue to evolve, the cybersecurity conversation is shifting from whether AI will change cyber defense to how quickly organisations can adapt before attackers gain a lasting advantage.
For CISOs, the challenge ahead may not simply be managing more threats. It may be operating in a world where the time available to detect, decide, and respond is rapidly disappearing.