MAM
Vivek Ballabh is Maxus Digital general manager
MUMBAI: Global marketing communications consultancy Maxus announced today the appointment of Vivek Ballabh as Maxus Digital general manager for North India.
Ballabh joins Maxus from Cheil India, where he managed the media operations for multiple clients . He brings with him extensive experience in digital marketing and branding which enables a significant understanding in planning/executing various integrated digital campaigns. In a career spanning 14+ years, Ballabh has worked with leading agencies/companies – these being Cheil India, Monster.com, Webchutney, Digitas & Razorfish etc. His body of work also includes working with several fortune 500 brands like HP, Samsung, AMD, Fritolays, 7Up, Microsoft, Makemytrip.com, Maruti Suzuki, Axis Bank, Nestle, Dabur and Airtel among others.
Ballabh started his career with the online marketing domain with Careercommunity.com which launched India’s first online job portal- Winjobs.com. He has spent 2 years at Monster.com as a Brand Manager where he handled marketing operations for South East Asian markets. With over 5 years spent at Digitas & Razorfish, he launched the digital media practice and also setup a SEM centric off-shore centre of 120 people, catering to the group’s business needs worldwide.
Commenting on the new appointment Maxus national director Vishal Jacob said, “Vivek brings invaluable experience in digital marketing. He brings the right mix of talent, experience and enthusiasm we seek to inject into our talent pool and will help the Maxus team in Delhi take a leap forward. The mandate for Vivek is to consolidate and grow the North operations which I’m sure he will do a fabulous job of and successfully achieve all milestones”
Elaborating on his new role Ballabh said, “I believe the digital revolution has just taken off in this market and the times ahead will be more exciting than ever. Brands have evolved in their digital thinking and Maxus is strongly poised to deliver cutting edge digital innovations, leading to more meaningful brand and consumer connections. I look forward to working closely with the super talented and energetic team that exists within the agency.”
Digital
India ranks second globally for ransomware detections in 2025
Acronis report warns of surging AI-powered attacks, phishing dominance, and high lateral movement in Indian networks.
MUMBAI: India’s cybersecurity defences are getting a serious stress test, hackers aren’t just knocking on the door anymore, they’re moving in, redecorating, and throwing a ransomware party before anyone notices. Acronis, the global cybersecurity and data protection firm, dropped its biannual Cyberthreats Report for H2 2025 (titled “From exploits to malicious AI”) on 18 February 2026, drawing from telemetry across over one million endpoints via its Threat Research Unit and sensors.
The standout alarm for India: it claimed second place worldwide for ransomware detections trailing only the US with a hefty 31 per cent of all global detections. It also cracked the top 10 for publicly identified ransomware victims, logging 129 cases where organisations went public. More worryingly, India topped charts for lateral movement and mass infection activity, including the planet’s largest internal propagation incidents. Attackers aren’t content with breaching the perimeter; they’re spreading like wildfire inside networks, amplifying disruption and business pain.
Globally, cyberattacks kept climbing in 2025. Email-based threats rose 16 per cent per organisation and 20 per cent per user year-on-year, while phishing stayed king, driving 83 per cent of email threats in the second half and serving as the entry point for 52 per cent of attacks on managed service providers (MSPs). Attacks on collaboration platforms exploded from 12 per cent in 2024 to 31 per cent in 2025, turning tools like Teams and Slack into prime secondary vectors.
Other red flags from the report:
Powershell abuse ruled as the most misused legitimate tool, especially in Germany, the US, and Brazil.
All MSP-platform CVEs disclosed in 2025 earned High or Critical ratings.
AI turned operational for crooks: used for reconnaissance, ransomware negotiations (e.g., Global Group automating chats across victims), data exfiltration (GTG-2002 style), and even chilling social engineering like AI-generated “proof of life” images in virtual kidnapping scams.
Hotspots included India, the US, and the Netherlands for mass infections and lateral hops; South Korea led malware hits at 12% of users affected.
Ransomware favourites targeted manufacturing, technology, and healthcare sectors crippled by uptime demands. Top groups: Qilin (962 victims), Akira (726), Cl0p (517). Nearly 150 MSPs and telcos hit directly; over 7,600 public victims worldwide, with the US suffering 3,243. Newcomers Sinobi, TheGentlemen, and CoinbaseCartel joined the fray in H2.
Supply-chain woes persisted too, RMM tools like AnyDesk and TeamViewer got exploited, affecting over 1,200 third parties globally, with the US taking 574 hits. Akira and Cl0p led here again.
Acronis CISO Gerald Beuchelt summed it up bluntly, “As cyber threats evolve at an accelerated pace, 2025 has shown that attackers are not only scaling traditional methods like phishing and ransomware, but are leveraging AI to act faster, more efficiently, and at greater scale. This shift requires organisations to anticipate threats, automate defences, and build resilient systems capable of withstanding both traditional and AI-driven attacks.”
For Indian businesses, the message is clear: the threat landscape isn’t just heating up, it’s gone full inferno, with AI fanning the flames. Time to upgrade those digital fire extinguishers before the next breach burns brighter.
