August 29,2025: HYSEA, in collaboration with IIIT Hyderabad, hosted the August edition on “Telangana State’s Cyber Security Measures”, chaired by DGP Shikha Goel IPS, DG, with insights from Prof. Sandeep Shukla (IIITH) and Krishna Sastry Pendyala (EY).

The session highlighted the growing scale of cyber threats. Cybercrime now makes up 22% of all major crimes, with financial losses nearly six times higher than traditional crimes. Between January and June 2025 alone, property losses from cyber incidents crossed ₹681 crore.

While attackers are getting smarter, using phishing, cloud and API vulnerabilities, supply chain backdoors, fake CAPTCHAs, and homoglyph phishing, technology is also fighting back. Case studies from Microsoft and PayPal showed how AI is preventing fraud at scale and blocking zero-day attacks.

The discussion also shed light on the geopolitical dimensions of cybercrime, from the $235M WazirX hack linked to North Korea to espionage campaigns like APT36 targeting India’s BOSS Linux OS. Yet the weakest link remains human error, responsible for 96% of breaches.

With 5.5 billion people online and critical infrastructure deeply interconnected, the message was clear: cybersecurity is no longer just an IT concern, it is a national, economic, and personal priority.