NEW DELHI: Cyber threat activity targeting India’s finance and healthcare sectors remained elevated in the first half of 2026, with detections already crossing 60% of the levels recorded during the whole of last year, according to data shared by govt in Parliament.CERT-In detected and mitigated almost 3.5 lakh instances of malicious scanning, probing and vulnerable services in the finance sector between Jan and June. This compares with 5.7 lakh instances during the whole of 2025.The healthcare sector recorded another 18,855 instances in the first six months, equivalent to nearly 55% of the 34,480 detected and mitigated during all of 2025. Together, finance and healthcare accounted for just under 3.7 lakh instances in the first half. However, targeted intrusion campaigns against banks did not show a similar increase. CERT-In detected and mitigated 17 such campaigns during Jan-June 2026, compared with 39 during the whole of 2025.The data also pointed to wider cybersecurity preparedness exercises for critical infrastructure. CERT-In conducted two exercises for the power sector in H1 2026, involving 274 participants from 103 organisations, including utilities, system operators and generation, transmission and distribution entities.Significantly, one of the exercises focused on countering emerging cybersecurity risks posed by frontier AI models, indicating that threats linked to advanced AI systems are now being incorporated into preparedness drills for critical infrastructure. In comparison, CERT-In conducted three power-sector cybersecurity exercises during 2025, involving 150 participants from 30 organisations.
