New Delhi, Oct 28 (IANS) India is strengthening the security of its financial infrastructure through a combination of physical decentralisation, indigenous cybersecurity capabilities and independent pool of technical defenders, a new report has said.
The report from India Narrative mentioned three recent initiatives as signalling a strategic shift in the protection of the country’s digital financial ecosystem.
These include the inauguration of the Reserve Bank of India’s new data centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute in Bhubaneswar, an agreement between the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and Bank of India to develop indigenous quantum-safe banking technologies, and the government’s decision to build an independent pool of technical defenders.
New Delhi executed these institutional moves in October 2026 recognising that modern warfare is fought in the “invisible corridors of payment servers, clearing houses, and banking databases.”
A prolonged disruption to the central payment grid would cause panic and paralyse national logistics without use of any conventional weapon.
The Financial Stability and Development Council also reviewed the newly formulated Financial Sector Cyber Security Strategy drafted by an inter ministerial group. The council looked beyond big commercial lenders and directed Regional Rural Banks to work towards stronger cyber preparedness.
“In a connected financial system, a poorly defended rural cooperative bank can easily act as a backdoor for hackers to infect the wider national network,” the report noted.
The RBI’s second major data hub in Odisha is aimed at geographically diversifying critical financial infrastructure away from traditional financial hubs.
The move will achieve “vital geographic dispersal away from high-risk seismic zones and traditional western strike corridors.”
Indigenous quantum banking ecosystem seeks to defend against failure of standard encryption methods amid rise of quantum computing.
“By pairing state owned computing researchers with a major public sector bank to test indigenous quantum safe security in sandbox environments, India is refusing to wait for expensive Western software patches,” the report said.
The government understood that Unified Payments Interface has formalised the grassroots economy at unprecedented speed, but created a massive surface area for hostile state and non-state actors.
“Intelligence and cybersecurity monitors routinely log millions of automated intrusion attempts targeting Indian banking networks, treasury portals, and stock exchanges every single year,” the report noted.
—IANS
aar/pk
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