IBM Study Shows India’s Growing AI Use but Limited Governance, Making Enterprises Top Targets for Cybercriminals
In 2025, India’s average data breach cost rose to ₹220 million, up 13%. IBM warns that rapid AI adoption without proper security and governance leaves businesses vulnerable to cyberattacks and rising risks.
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In 2025, the cost of a data breach in India hit an all-time high of ₹220 million on average. IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report reveals that this is a 13% increase over previous year. The survey shows a concerning pattern that businesses in India are fast adopting artificial intelligence (AI) in their operations, but security and governance aren't keeping up. Cybercriminals are taking advantage of this weakness.
One important conclusion is that only 37% of Indian businesses now have AI access controls in place. Even more alarming, almost 60% either don't have AI governance strategies or are still working on establishing them. IBM states that this gap makes businesses very weak.
Another big problem is the use of AI in unauthorized way, which is referred to as "Shadow AI." The report said that using AI in this way without restrictions was one of the top three reasons for breach costs, costing an average of ₹17.9 million. Still, only 42% of organizations have the tools they need to keep surveillance on or govern Shadow AI.
The study also shared some key figures. Phishing attacks accounted for 18% of breaches, issues with third-party vendors made up 17%, and software vulnerabilities caused 13%. The average time taken to detect and resolve a breach was 263 days, showing an improvement of 15 days compared to last year. Despite this progress, the overall cost of breaches continues to climb.
The survey found that the research sector suffered most severely, with average breach costs of ₹289 million. Transportation was following with ₹288 million, and industrial companies were third, with ₹264 million.
It's interesting that using AI-powered security solutions and automation reduced breach expenses by more than half. But 73% of Indian companies indicated they still didn't use these technologies very much or at all.
IBM's analysis makes it clear that Indian companies need to build trust, transparency, and good management into their AI systems as they start using them. The cost of hacks will only keep going up if security procedures don't get better.
Information referenced in this article is from Business Today
