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Informist, Thursday, Apr. 23, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman Thursday urged banks to develop capabilities to tackle emerging threats linked to recent developments in Artificial Intelligence models that may be misused to weaponise software vulnerabilities. She asked Indian Banks' Association to develop a coordinated institutional mechanism to respond swiftly and effectively to any such threats, the Finance Ministry said in post on X.

 

In a high-level meeting, along with Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, Sitharaman directed banks to engage the best available cybersecurity professionals and specialised agencies to continuously strengthen defensive and monitoring capabilities.

 

The meeting was attended by Department of Financial Services Secretary M. Nagaraju, Director General of Indian Computer Emergency Response Team Sanjay Bahl, managing director and chief executive officers of banks, senior officials of the Reserve Bank of India and National Payments Corp. of India. Banks were also advised to immediately report any suspicious activity or cyber incident to the relevant authorities and to maintain close coordination with all concerned agencies.

 

This comes after Anthropic, a US-based artificial intelligence company, said that unauthorised access was made on its new model Mythos, which is deemed, too, dangerous for public release. The company had chosen to restrict access to the new model to select partners because of its unprecedented ability to autonomously detect and exploit software vulnerabilities. Any unauthorised access to Mythos opens the possibility of exploitation of its power and India is taking a holistic view of its implications on the financial system, including on the payments system.

 

Sitharaman asked banks to take necessary pre-emptive measures to secure their information technology systems, safeguard customer data, and protect monetary resources. She raised concerns over emerging threat from the latest Artificial Intelligence model that is unprecedented and requires a very high degree of vigilance, preparedness and better coordination across financial institutions and banks.  End

 

Reported by Sagar Sen

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

 

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