KOCHI: Artificial intelligence is accelerating the scale, speed and sophistication of cybercrime, making resilience and skilled manpower critical to protecting essential systems, Director General of Police-rank officer and Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau Director Manoj Abraham warned at the Kerala Cyber Suraksha Summit 2026.
Addressing the second edition of the summit at Le Meridien, Kochi, on Saturday, Abraham said cyberattacks had evolved to a point where they could cripple countries and organisations, disrupt critical infrastructure and interfere with military operations without conventional weapons being used.
He cited a 389 per cent year-on-year rise in confirmed ransomware victims worldwide, a figure also recorded by FortiGuard Labs for 2025, when 7,831 victims were identified compared with about 1,600 a year earlier. The security company linked part of the increase to the availability of AI-enabled crime tools and automated attack capabilities.
Abraham also pointed to the financial impact of online fraud across India, saying reported losses reached Rs 19,813 crore in 2025. Data compiled by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre from the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal put the number of complaints that year at about 21.77 lakh, underscoring the volume of fraud cases confronting enforcement agencies and financial institutions.
The senior police officer said artificial intelligence had changed both the economics and operational reach of cybercrime by allowing attackers to automate tasks that previously required greater technical skill, time and manpower. That shift has increased the need for organisations to design systems capable not only of preventing breaches but also of continuing essential operations and recovering quickly when attacks succeed.
A shortage of cybersecurity skills is adding to the pressure. Abraham referred to a global gap of 4.8 million cybersecurity professionals, an estimate published by ISC2 in its 2024 workforce study. The organisation’s 2025 study shifted emphasis from total headcount to shortages in specific skills, finding that employers were increasingly concerned about capabilities in areas such as artificial intelligence, cloud security and incident response.
Abraham said Kerala’s human-resource base could provide an advantage in meeting demand for cybersecurity expertise, provided training kept pace with rapidly changing threats. His remarks placed workforce development alongside technology investment as a central component of cyber resilience.
Gaganyaan astronaut-designate Air Commodore Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, who also addressed the summit, said cybersecurity alone would not be sufficient unless India strengthened its own artificial-intelligence capabilities. He said future conflicts and industries would increasingly blur distinctions between physical and digital domains, making sovereign technological capacity more important.
“No amount of cybersecurity is ever completely sufficient. True security can only be guaranteed if we develop our own AI technology,” Nair said, arguing that the country should use its software strengths to build indigenous systems rather than depend entirely on technologies developed elsewhere.
Ernakulam MP Hibi Eden inaugurated the summit. He welcomed an initiative by F9 Infotech to provide cybersecurity training, awareness programmes and certification without charge to government educational institutions across Kerala, an effort aimed at expanding access to basic cyber skills.
F9 Infotech founder Jayakumar Mohanachandran said cyber protection needed to extend beyond corporate leadership and specialist teams to ordinary users, businesses and public institutions. He said more than Rs 56,000 crore in cyber-fraud complaints had been recorded across India over the past three years, while response systems had helped prevent losses exceeding Rs 11,000 crore across roughly 32 lakh complaints.
FortiGuard Labs’ 2026 threat assessment, reflecting 2025 activity, also found that exploitation attempts rose by about 25 per cent to nearly 122 billion worldwide, while critical vulnerabilities could be targeted within 24 to 48 hours of disclosure. The findings illustrated the shrinking window available to defenders to patch exposed systems, revoke compromised credentials and contain intrusions before attackers move laterally through networks or deploy ransomware at scale globally.
