NexusSec.Every threat report opens with a big number, and every big number produces the same reaction in a business owner: that is alarming, and I have no idea what to do with it.
So here are the three figures worth knowing from India’s 2026 picture, and - more usefully - what each one should actually change.
1. Roughly 2.94 million incidents in 2025, trending about 30% higher through 2026
National incident data recorded over 29.44 lakh incidents last year, with projections pointing to a further rise this year. India has also been reported as the most-targeted country for malware across India.
What it should change: your assumption about whether you are interesting enough to attack. You are not being targeted - that is the point. At that volume, almost nothing is targeted. Attackers scan the whole internet for exposed services and unpatched appliances, then work through whatever answers. Being a 40-person firm in Navi Mumbai does not remove you from a scan; it just means nobody chose you personally.
2. Around seven in ten Indian companies hit by ransomware in the last full year
BFSI, IT services, education and government absorb the worst of it, though the spread is wide. Recent disclosures include Tata Technologies and Raymond, both of which reported incidents affecting internal IT assets and both of which are considerably better resourced than the average Indian mid-market business.
What it should change: whether you have ever tested a restore. Not whether you have backups - everyone says yes to that. Whether someone has actually restored from them recently and timed it. An untested backup is a belief, and ransomware is the event that converts beliefs into facts. This is the cheapest meaningful thing on this page and the one most often skipped.
3. Upwards of $10 billion a year in economic cost
Estimates vary and under-reporting is universal, so treat the figure as directional rather than precise.
What it should change: how you frame the budget conversation internally. Security spend competes with things that produce visible revenue, and it loses that argument when framed as insurance. Framed as downtime - what does a day of stopped production, stopped invoicing or stopped dispatch actually cost us - it becomes a number your finance lead can work with. Most businesses have never calculated that number, and it is usually larger than the security budget they declined.
What the numbers do not tell you
They do not tell you where you are exposed. Nobody’s risk profile is the national average.
In our engagements, the findings that matter are consistently unglamorous and consistently local:
- A flat network where one compromised machine reaches the file server, the accounts system and the CCTV recorder alike.
- A firewall two firmware versions behind at a branch office because the cutover happened during a busy quarter.
- Remote access without MFA, because it was bought and never switched on.
- Domain spoofing protection missing entirely, so anyone can send invoices as you.
- Backups running nightly that nobody has restored from in two years.
Not one of those is in a threat report. All of them are findable in an afternoon.
The honest framing
National statistics are useful for one thing: getting a budget conversation started. They are close to useless for deciding what to fix, because they describe an average that resembles nobody.
If the numbers above prompted a reaction, the productive next step is not reading another report. It is finding out which of those five findings apply to you specifically - and four of the five you can check yourself this week, without hiring anyone.