India ranks 7th globally among countries where customers were most frequently impacted by cyber threats
AI is accelerating the speed and scale of cyber activity, while identity, interconnected risks and resilience emerge as key priorities for organizations
Microsoft today released the 2026 Microsoft Digital Defense Report (MDDR), revealing an increasingly interconnected cyber threat landscape as artificial intelligence reshapes both attacks and defense. In India, the report found that the country ranked 7th globally among countries where Microsoft customers were most frequently impacted by cyber threats between January and June 2026, accounting for 2.5% of the total observed impact during the period.
The report draws on Microsoft's visibility across more than 165 trillion security signals daily, alongside 5.2 billion emails screened each day, 31 million identity risk detections analyzed on an average day and approximately 4.7 million net new malware file blocks every day.
This year's MDDR identifies a common pattern across AI, nation-state activity, cybercrime and resilience: cyber risk is becoming increasingly interconnected. Threats are moving across identities, software and supply chains, partners, cloud platforms, data and AI systems, allowing a compromise in one part of the ecosystem to have consequences well beyond the initial point of entry.
· India ranked 7th globally for observed cyber threat impact: Between January and June 2026, India accounted for 2.5% of total observed impact among countries where Microsoft customers were most frequently impacted by cyber threats. The United States ranked first at 25.5%, followed by Israel at 7.6%, Ukraine at 4.8%, Taiwan at 3.9%, the United Kingdom at 3.8% and the UAE at 2.8%.
· Nation-state activity remains significant: Microsoft's regional sample recorded 58 observed nation-state activity events in India between July 2025 and June 2026. The Asia & Pacific sample recorded 193 in Taiwan, 172 in Japan, 58 in India, 27 in Australia and 25 in Hong Kong SAR.
· India featured among targets of Iranian and North Korean state-aligned actors: India accounted for 6% of Iranian state-aligned targeting captured in Microsoft's nation-state notification data. Separately, India accounted for 2% of North Korean state actor targeting. These figures represent the respective distribution of targeting captured in Microsoft's nation-state notification data, rather than India's share of all cyberattacks.
· India is preparing for the post-quantum transition: The report notes that India, alongside Singapore and Malaysia, is developing guidelines to help the public and private sectors prepare for the transition to quantum-safe cryptography.
AI is also changing the economics and speed of cyber activity. Microsoft finds that AI is reducing the time, expertise and cost required to discover and exploit weaknesses, enabling threat actors to operate with greater speed, scale and autonomy. At the same time, AI gives defenders new capabilities to continuously discover vulnerabilities, correlate signals, identify anomalous behavior, prioritize risk and increasingly automate defensive action.
October 01, 2026
