State Bank of India (SBI) has stepped up its fight against digital threats with the launch of CyRIS, a dedicated Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence that pulls the country’s largest lender’s cyber policy, training, research, threat intelligence and defence capabilities onto a single strategic platform.
The centre was inaugurated in Mumbai on October 26, 2026 by Sanjay Lohiya, Secretary, Department of Financial Services (DFS), in the presence of SBI Chairman Challa Sreenivasulu Setty and senior officials from the government and the bank.
Three pillars: Think, Innovate, Defend
CyRIS is structured around three complementary pillars that together aim to shift SBI from reacting to attacks towards anticipating them:
- THINK covers cyber policy, a cyber academy and citizen-focused initiatives designed to build talent and raise awareness.
- INNOVATE focuses on innovation, research and benchmarking, so the bank can measure its cyber maturity against evolving global practices.
- DEFEND brings together cyber defence, threat intelligence and cyber resilience to spot threats early and respond faster.
The centre’s work will span threat intelligence, cyber defence, digital forensics, malware analysis, ethical hacking, fraud analytics, AI security and quantum-safe technologies. SBI said CyRIS will also work with government and regulatory bodies, other financial institutions, fintechs, academia and technology partners, since cyber threats increasingly cut across organisational boundaries.
Trust at the core
“Cybersecurity is fundamental to customer trust and the resilience of our digital financial ecosystem. CyRIS will strengthen our ability to anticipate emerging threats and stay ahead of the evolving cyber landscape,” said Challa Sreenivasulu Setty, Chairman, SBI.
Sanjay Lohiya, Secretary, DFS, called the centre a timely step. “As India’s financial ecosystem becomes increasingly digital, cyber resilience must grow alongside innovation. CyRIS is a timely initiative to strengthen capabilities, collaboration, and preparedness across the ecosystem,” he said.
Building a cyber-aware workforce
The launch builds on SBI’s broader investment in people. During FY26, about 1.81 lakh of the bank’s roughly 2.45 lakh employees completed mandatory cybersecurity e-learning. According to the bank’s FY26 disclosures, it also ran 2,079 information-security and cybersecurity training programmes covering nearly 40,000 employees, alongside customer awareness drives on digital safety and fraud prevention.
SBI already operates a Global Cyber Security Operations Centre that monitors critical systems around the clock, with automated tracking of indicators of compromise, and runs regular audits, vulnerability assessments, red-team exercises and cyber drills. The bank has said it plans to evolve that operations centre into an integrated Cyber Defence Centre, using automation, machine learning and agentic AI, during FY27. CyRIS is the knowledge and capability layer meant to sit alongside that effort and extend its benefits to the wider banking, financial services and insurance sector.
Why it matters
With UPI, mobile banking and digital lending now handling a large share of everyday financial activity, banks face a fast-growing attack surface, from phishing and brand impersonation to AI-driven fraud. A dedicated centre of excellence at India’s largest bank, set up with the backing of the Department of Financial Services, signals that cyber resilience is becoming as central to banking strategy as credit growth and capital adequacy, and gives the sector a shared hub for skills, research and threat intelligence.
