Mumbai, September 17, 2026: Cybercrime patterns are rapidly evolving, with so-called ‘digital arrest’ scams declining by 67 per cent following sustained awareness campaigns, while investment fraud has emerged as a growing area of concern, said Brijesh Singh, Principal Secretary, Directorate of Information and Public Relations, Government of Maharashtra.
Speaking at a panel discussion titled “Agentic AI VS Cyber Crime: Automation on Both Sides” at Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2026 in Mumbai, Singh said awareness initiatives, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s references to digital arrest scams during Mann Ki Baat, have contributed to the decline. However, he cautioned that cybercriminals are continuously adapting their methods.
“Awareness alone cannot outpace fraud, which keeps adapting and getting complex,” Singh said, highlighting the need for cybersecurity systems to evolve at the same pace as emerging threats.
According to Singh, the rise of agentic AI has significantly altered the cybersecurity landscape, enabling cyberattacks that previously required multiple human participants to be executed autonomously and adapted in real time. He called for defensive systems to match this speed and sophistication.
He also stressed the need to approach cybersecurity as a shared digital infrastructure rather than an individual institutional responsibility. Singh noted that fraud networks increasingly operate across telecom networks, applications, banking platforms and social media, making protection limited to individual organisational perimeters insufficient.
Singh further pointed to the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub’s upcoming Digital Payments Intelligence Platform as an example of the shift towards continuous, risk-based monitoring. He noted that accounts can potentially become mule accounts even when they have clean KYC records at the time of onboarding.
The discussion also highlighted the growing role of generative AI in financial fraud. Singh said real-time deepfakes have become increasingly accessible, allowing fraudsters to impersonate individuals during video calls. He also pointed to challenges around digital provenance, where the ability to dismiss genuine evidence as AI-generated could make fraud investigations and prosecution more difficult.
Rajesh Thapar, CISO, NSE India, said cyber defence needs to operate at “machine speed” and should be built around four pillars: anticipating threats, preventing attacks, withstanding incidents and adapting to changing risks. He also emphasised that AI should remain under human control.
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Mithilesh Singh, Managing Director, Protiviti, stressed that trust and transparency must remain central as financial institutions and other organisations expand their adoption of AI technologies.
The panel was moderated by Viswanath Krishnamurty, CRO, NPCI, and formed part of GFF 2026, which brought together stakeholders from the financial services, payments, technology and cybersecurity ecosystem to discuss emerging challenges and opportunities in digital finance.
Global Fintech Fest 2026 is organised by the Payments Council of India (PCI), National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and Fintech Convergence Council (FCC), with support from government and financial-sector institutions.
