The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has introduced two new cybersecurity platforms aimed at strengthening the way market intermediaries report, track and respond to cyber threats.
The Incident Reporting Portal will provide a more structured mechanism for reporting cybersecurity incidents and bring the process in line with the Financial Stability Board’s reporting format.
The regulator has also launched the Cyber Suraksha Portal, which will serve as a central platform for sharing cybersecurity-related information across the securities market ecosystem.
Focus on ecosystem resilience
Speaking at SEBI’s Cyber Defence Symposium, Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey said the regulator’s cybersecurity approach needs to look beyond whether a particular organisation is secure and focus on the resilience of the entire financial ecosystem.
According to Pandey, a cyber incident affecting one institution can potentially spread through vendors, technology platforms, third-party service providers and other connected entities. This makes coordinated monitoring and information sharing increasingly important.
He also called for a change in the way organisations approach vulnerability management. Instead of treating cybersecurity as a periodic compliance exercise, firms should adopt a continuous, risk-based process.
Software, cloud configurations, application programming interfaces (APIs) and third-party dependencies are constantly changing, creating new vulnerabilities that need to be identified and addressed on an ongoing basis.
AI, quantum computing to create new challenges
Pandey highlighted the growing role of artificial intelligence in cybersecurity, noting that AI is accelerating both cyberattacks and defensive capabilities.
Organisations, therefore, need to continuously identify, evaluate, prioritise, fix and validate vulnerabilities rather than relying on occasional assessments.
The regulator is also preparing for longer-term cybersecurity risks associated with quantum computing. Pandey said quantum resilience has now become a key pillar of SEBI’s cybersecurity strategy.
He emphasised that the transition to post-quantum cryptography should be treated as an actual migration programme rather than a distant research exercise.
The twin portals are expected to improve communication among market participants while helping SEBI build a more coordinated response to emerging cyber risks across the securities market.
