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.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
