'There Is No Other Option But To Build Domestic Capacity': MeitY Secretary Warns Against Foreign Tech Becoming A Cyber ‘Trojan Horse'

“There is no other option but to build domestic capacity” in cybersecurity, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), S Krishnan, said, warning organisations against treating foreign technologies as unquestionable solutions amid the rapid evolution of AI-led cyber threats.

Speaking at the launch of SISA and CERT-In’s Digital Threat Report 2025-26, Krishnan said India must focus on developing indigenous cybersecurity capabilities, arguing that self-reliance is no longer optional in an increasingly hostile digital environment.

“Structure is something that we can support ourselves with. The critical thing here, emphasized from a number of previous occasions, is building domestic capacity. In this particular space there is no other option but to build domestic capacity,” he said.

Using the analogy of the mythical Trojan horse, Krishnan cautioned enterprises against blindly trusting imported technologies, saying every technology entering the country’s digital ecosystem must be examined critically.

“I think the frustration is that I don’t know whether it represents a Trojan horse or whether it represents some other horse. The idea of the importance of domestic capacity and to look every proverbial gift horse in the mouth is something which is very critical in the cybersecurity space,” he added.

His remarks come as the Digital Threat Report 2025-26 warns that cyberattacks are no longer limited to stealing data or disrupting systems. Instead, threat actors are increasingly targeting customer identity, transaction integrity, intelligent decision-making systems, partner ecosystems and autonomous technologies, making attacks harder to detect as they increasingly resemble legitimate business activity.

The report notes that the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector is entering a new phase where cyber risks extend beyond isolated breaches to include trust, operational continuity and confidence in the digital infrastructure underpinning the economy.

According to the report, three structural shifts are reshaping the cyber threat landscape: AI and human deception, where deepfakes and adversarial AI are eroding trust in human judgement; software and systems, driven by supply chain compromise, logic abuse and AI-enabled attacks; and infrastructure and economy, where cyber incidents increasingly threaten financial continuity, critical infrastructure and long-term cryptographic trust.

Against this backdrop, Krishnan said organisations need to remain continuously vigilant.

“That is the level of alertness that we need to preserve on a continuous ongoing basis to make sure that cybersecurity-related interventions within the country to address these issues are the very critical element of what needs to happen. I think that is something which this particular report highlights,” he said.

Krishnan’s remarks also come amid growing concerns over the cybersecurity implications of increasingly capable frontier AI models. Companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI have acknowledged that their latest AI systems possess advanced coding and reasoning capabilities that could be misused to identify software vulnerabilities, automate cyberattacks and accelerate the discovery of exploitable flaws. Security researchers have warned that as these models become more autonomous and widely accessible, enterprises could face faster, more sophisticated attacks, reducing the window available to detect, patch and respond to emerging vulnerabilities.

These developments mirror several of the report’s warnings around the malicious use of large language models, adversarial machine learning and deepfake technologies, which it identifies as key risks likely to shape the cybersecurity landscape through 2026 and beyond.

Calling the report an important contribution, Krishnan urged enterprises to treat it as a practical guide rather than just another industry publication.

“The intent and the purpose is that enterprises and organizations across the country take it seriously, study its message clearly, identify which are the specific threats against which they need to act, and stay alert to make sure that we are in a position to ensure that, despite all the cyber threats, business as usual continues to be resilient and we are able to function without disruptions,” he said.