The Digital Threat Report 2024:

The Digital Threat Report 2024 — a collaborative publication of SISA, CERT-In and CSIRT-Fin — is more than an industry white paper. It is a forensic map of contemporary adversary trade-craft, a status report on the fragile condition of the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) ecosystem, and a policy brief in the guise of technical analysis. When Read together, its data, case studies and recommendations outline, a single inescapable conclusion: India’s financial digital infrastructure has outpaced its defensive design and its legal scaffolding. This essay tries to dissects the report end-to-end: what it says, why it matters, where the systemic gaps are, and what urgent corrective architecture lawmakers and regulators must adopt.

1. Scope, method and credibility

The report synthesises SISA’s DFIR investigations, incident data from CSIRT-Fin and national advisories from CERT-In. It evaluates roughly 1,550 client assessments globally (and 700 outside India) to derive compliance and control-gap statistics, and combines that empirical lens with curated case studies to show how theoretical vulnerabilities play out in production environments. That blend of forensic depth and breadth gives the report both tactical credibility (how attacks were executed) and strategic weight (what systemic trends are).

2. The threat landscape — evolution and velocity

Three linked trends dominate the narrative:

a. AI as an equaliser for attackers

The report documents adversarial use of generative AI and malicious LLMs (e.g., WormGPT, FraudGPT) to craft flawless phishing, automate malware and create convincing deepfakes that defeat human and technical triage. AI lowers the bar for complex social engineering and scales targeted campaigns.

b. Supply-chain and third-party compromise

Incidents like MOVEit and GoAnywhere exemplify that attackers now weaponise trusted channels—third-party software, managed file transfer vendors, and open-source components—so a single supplier compromise can cascade to hundreds of institutions. The report repeatedly stresses this as a systemic vulnerability.

c. Identity & cloud misconfigurations as primary vectors

Phishing, credential theft, session/cookie hijacking and MFA bypasses account for a large share of initial access, while cloud misconfigurations (public buckets, leaked tokens, excessive IAM privileges) provide easy persistence and data exfiltration. The report notes a sharp rise in exploitation within hours or days of vulnerability disclosure—attacks now run at network speed.
Together these dynamics shift the defender’s problem from perimeter hardening to systemic risk management: identity hygiene, supply-chain assurance, and rapid, sector-wide response.

3. Case studies:

How Theoretical weaknesses become systemic losses

The report’s eight case studies are instructive for policy because they convert abstract controls into concrete failures:

Reward Heist: Hardcoded DB credentials + unpatched server → mass manipulation of reward points and monetisation.

Lesson: credential management and input validation failures have direct financial consequences. 

Silent Heist: Low-volume fraud on smaller BFSI entities exploited gaps that large institutions often patch; smaller entities remain soft targets due to limited security maturity.

Lesson: systemic resilience requires lifting the tail of small players

Silent Infiltration (Ransomware via supply chain): RansomEXX exploited a third-party provider, deleted backups, and executed double-extortion—demonstrating how supply-chain compromise is functionally equivalent to an attack on the primary institution. 

Wallet Exploit & Cashback Manipulation: API and transaction-flow integrity lapses allowed replay or MITM attacks to inflate transactions or siphon value—underscoring the need for server-to-server validation and API secrets management.

Webshell Breach and Hardware hack case: XSS → webshell → AWS S3 exposure shows how simple application flaws cascade into cloud disasters; fault-injection on hardware wallets illustrates physical and firmware attack surfaces.
Each case narrates a chain: a small misconfiguration or human error → lateral movement → large impact. The pattern should unsettle any regulator who treats security as checklists rather than systemic engineering.

4. Control gaps and systemic weaknesses From the empirical assessments, several recurring weaknesses emerge:

Identity & IAM gaps: MFA not universally enforced, stale privileged accounts, incomplete conditional access policies and missing periodic access reviews.
Logging & detection blind spots: DNS, proxy, MFA and Office365 logs are often not integrated into SIEMs—eroding detection and forensic capability.
Patch and vulnerability management lacunae: Organizations often lack timely patching, vulnerability scanning regimes and consistent VAPT cycles.
Cloud misconfigurations: Publicly exposed buckets, leaked tokens, and over-privileged service accounts remain prevalent.
IoT visibility & lifecycle issues: Vast, poorly inventoried device fleets with limited patch support and insecure defaults—99% of IoT exploitation attempts rely on known CVEs.
Importantly, the report emphasises that organisations often possess many security tools (64–76 on average) yet fail to translate tool proliferation into coherent defense—an industry-wide “security sprawl” problem.

5. Regulatory shortcomings and the need for harmonisation

The report catalogues existing regulatory instruments (RBI CSF, DPSC, SEBI CSCRF, IRDAI guidelines, CERT-In directives, DPDP Act) but flags fragmentation: overlapping, sometimes inconsistent obligations that produce compliance fatigue rather than demonstrable resilience. It recommends harmonisation and sector-wide standards for digital payment security. The state of Indian regulation today creates gaps in supply-chain liability, incident reporting clarity, and enforcement teeth—areas the report identifies as critical to close.

6. Recommendations — technical, organisational, and policy
The report’s remediation stack is organised across the triad: people, process, technology

Key recommendations that deserve legislative or regulatory backing include:

• Zero-Trust adoption (identity-first controls, micro-segmentation)
  Stronger IAM & log retention: enforce MFA, conditional access and ≥180 days of log retention for forensic readiness.
• Supply-chain security controls: vendor certification, continuous monitoring, third-party audits, and joint liability clauses.
• AI governance: Responsible AI frameworks for BFSI covering explainability, model risk management and accountability for AI-enabled fraud.
• Quantum-readiness roadmaps: plan and test migration to quantum-resistant cryptography.
• IoT device security standards: secure boot, firmware signing, tamper detection, and mandatory certification before deployment.
  These are good technical prescriptions; the report’s central policy push is to bind these to statutory obligations and enforcement mechanisms rather than leaving them as best practice.

7. What lawmakers must do — a compact policy roadmap

The report’s lessons translate into five legislative priorities:
1. A unified BFSI cyber code: That harmonises sectoral regulations and establishes a single, empowered supervisory authority.
2. Mandatory breach reporting with enforcement: clear timelines, penalties for concealment, mandatory forensic audits and public disclosure for systemic incidents.
3. Statutory liability for negligent security: penalise gross security negligence (e.g., unpatched critical vulnerabilities, publicly exposed PII) and create joint supplier liability models.
4. CISO empowerment and governance mandates: require CISOs to report to the board/CEO and codify responsibilities and competencies.
5. Mandatory supply-chain assurance and IoT certification: statutory third-party security baselines, signed SLAs and certifiable IoT standards.

8. Conclusion — the political economy of cyber resilience

The Digital Threat Report 2024 is a call to reframe cybersecurity from a vendor market and checklist exercise into national infrastructure policy. The BFSI sector underpins economic stability; systemic cyber shocks are not private losses but potential public crises. The report’s empirical depth—case studies, compliance metrics and forward-looking threat forecasts—creates a compelling mandate: policy must move from siloed guidance to enforceable, harmonised law that treats cyber hygiene as a public good. That is the single legislative and regulatory challenge India must meet if it wants its digital finance revolution to survive the era of AI and supply-chain risk.
The Digital Threat Report 2024 makes one message unmistakably clear: India’s BFSI sector is facing a new generation of cyber threats that move faster, hit harder, and exploit both technology and human behavior with unprecedented precision. As AI-driven attacks, cloud misconfigurations, and supply-chain compromises become the norm, traditional defenses are no longer enough.
The report concludes that the sector must urgently shift to Zero Trust security, continuous threat intelligence, stronger identity controls, and a unified regulatory approach. Without this transformation, the rising wave of sophisticated cyberattacks could outpace the sector’s defenses and threaten the stability of India’s digital financial ecosystem.

Sources

Primary source for every section above: Digital Threat Report 2024 (SISA, CERT-In & CSIRT-Fin).