For years, cybersecurity was treated as a technical function: delegated to the CISO, discussed in IT sub-committees and reviewed primarily through the lens of compliance. That era is decisively over. In today’s environment of AI-enabled threats, geopolitical cyber spillovers and digitally intertwined supply chains, cyber resilience has become a CEO-level metric, one that increasingly defines enterprise credibility, valuation and continuity.
The global narrative is unambiguous. According to multiple international risk assessments, cyber risk now ranks alongside inflation, geopolitical conflict and supply-chain disruption as a top enterprise threat. Yet the more troubling insight lies not in threat volume, but in the maturity gap, the widening distance between the sophistication of attackers and the preparedness of organisations. Artificial intelligence has accelerated this asymmetry. Threat actors now deploy AI to scale phishing, automate reconnaissance and simulate trusted identities with alarming precision, while many enterprises continue to rely on static controls, fragmented visibility and reactive incident response.
India mirrors this global pattern, but with sharper consequences.
As one of the world’s fastest-digitising large economies, India’s corporate landscape, particularly across BFSI, manufacturing, logistics, healthcare and export-oriented SMEs, has embraced cloud platforms, SaaS tools and API-driven ecosystems at speed. Digital adoption has outpaced cyber maturity. Boards celebrate digital transformation milestones, yet cyber resilience often remains measured through narrow KPIs: number of incidents closed, audits passed or tools deployed. These indicators say little about whether the organisation can withstand, absorb and recover from a serious cyber shock.
This is where the leadership question arises.
A ransomware attack that halts operations, a data breach that triggers regulatory scrutiny or a supply-chain compromise that disrupts exports does not remain a “CISO issue” for long. It becomes a CEO problem within hours, affecting customer trust, market perception, partner confidence and in some cases, national critical infrastructure obligations. The CEO is ultimately accountable not for the firewall configuration, but for the enterprise’s ability to remain functional and credible under cyber stress.
Cyber resilience, therefore, must be reframed. It is not merely about preventing breaches; it is about decision-making under digital duress. Can leadership assess trade-offs quickly? Are crisis roles clearly defined? Is there alignment between technology teams, legal counsel, communications, insurers and business heads? Are third-party and supply-chain risks understood at the same level of seriousness as internal threats?
AI intensifies this challenge further. Generative AI has lowered the cost of sophisticated attacks while compressing response timelines. Deepfake-enabled fraud, automated credential harvesting, and AI-driven vulnerability discovery are no longer theoretical risks. Yet many organisations, especially mid-market firms, still lack basic cyber hygiene, let alone AI-aware defence strategies. This mismatch is not technological; it is governance-driven.
In the Indian boardroom, cyber discussions often surface episodically, after an incident, during audits or when regulators intervene. What is missing is continuous ownership. CEOs must now ask different questions:
- What is our cyber risk appetite?
- Which business processes are truly critical?
- How exposed are we through vendors, SaaS platforms, and partners?
- If operations stop for 48 hours, what fails first: technology, cash flow or trust?
These are not CISO-only questions. They cut across strategy, finance, operations and reputation.
Encouragingly, regulatory signals are beginning to reinforce this shift. Indian regulators across banking, insurance, capital markets and critical infrastructure are tightening expectations around cyber governance, board oversight and incident disclosure. Cyber insurance underwriting, too, is forcing uncomfortable but necessary conversations about preparedness, response readiness and residual risk. Together, these forces are elevating cyber resilience from a technical checklist to a leadership discipline.
The implication is clear: CEOs can no longer outsource cyber risk to dashboards and quarterly reports. Resilience must be embedded into enterprise strategy, leadership culture and board accountability. Just as financial resilience became a core CEO metric after past crises, cyber resilience is now a defining test of modern leadership.
In an AI-shaped threat landscape, the question is no longer if systems will be tested, but how prepared leadership is when they are. Cyber resilience, ultimately, is not about technology failure, it is about leadership readiness.
