#FactCheck-Old Bihar train protest video falsely linked to CJP protest and India’s first hydrogen train.

Introduction

India is operating on digital rails today. Even as UPI is set to hit over 130 billion transactions by 2025, it already makes up around 80% of retail payments flow by volume. That volume is really what it is all about: a single extra transaction is simply another attack surface, and fraud has correspondingly scaled up. FY 2024-25 alone saw an estimated 485 crore in losses to UPI-related fraud through 632,000 reported frauds.  The response from the RBI has not been a single rulebook but a layered and dynamic regulatory infrastructure that currently spans banks, NBFCs, payment aggregators, card networks, and, by extension, the fintechs that connect into all of these components. Knowing why the infrastructure is shaped the way it is and what actual enforcement looks like is far more crucial than having a checklist in mind. This write-up moves beyond summarising the rules to outlining the thinking behind them, the latest trends shaping the segment and the reality of an implementation roadmap.

Why Has RBI Cybersecurity Compliance Become Non-Negotiable?

Three forces are converging on regulated entities at once:

1. The threat surface has outgrown legacy controls: Core banking systems were never designed for an ecosystem of APIs, third-party payment gateways, and unregulated fintech partners sitting on top of them. Every integration is a potential entry point, and attackers know it.

2. Financial stability is now a cyber question, not just a credit question: a prolonged outage at a large payment system operator doesn't just hurt one bank's balance sheet; it can freeze retail payments for hundreds of millions of people. RBI treats this as systemic risk, which is why its post-2020 directions lean so heavily on resilience (the ability to keep operating through an attack) rather than just prevention.

3. Enforcement has escalated: The RBI's May 2025 single order penalised five different banks, including levying a 97.80 lakh penalty on ICICI Bank with one part attributable to its late reporting of a cybersecurity incident and another to a lapse in account alert systems; this demonstrates this rise in intensity. Remember, under Sections 46 and 47A of the Banking Regulation Act 1949, the RBI has the power to levy penalties irrespective of the occurrence of an actual breach if an individual fails to comply with procedures like not properly assessing vendor access or reporting incidents late or failing to update crisis plans or timely reports. Now this is a significant development, an issue even in the absence of a full-scale 'hack'.

The Regulatory Architecture: What Actually Applies to Whom

Rather than one framework, regulated entities are governed by several overlapping directions depending on their category:

• Banks: The original RBI Cyber Security Framework requires board-approved cybersecurity policies, 24x7 Security Operations Centres, and defined incident reporting timelines.
• NBFCs: NBFCs were initially governed under the Master Direction on IT Framework for NBFC Sector, which escalates accordingly as per size of asset – the framework underwent substantial change in shape with the RBI notifying Cybersecurity, Technology Risk, Resilience and Assurance Framework directions, 2026 for NBFCs, which lays specific obligations based on tier level (NBFC-Base Layer, Middle Layer, Upper Layer & Top Layer entities) on issues like MIS reporting, fraud analytics & impact of incident reporting. 
• PSOs: Non-bank Payment system Operators PSOs have been regulated under the Master Direction on Cyber Resilience and Digital Payment Security Controls, 2024 (July 2024). Card networks, payment aggregators, PPI issuers and other PSOs come under its umbrella, with staged compliance based on the volume/business size (large – NPCI, card networks and the largest PPI issuers will meet requirements on April 1, 2025; medium ones by April 1, 2026; and small ones by April 1, 2028).
• Other Bodies: IT Governance (on all regulated entities broadly) The Master Direction on Information Technology Governance, Risk, Controls and Assurance Practices, 2023, became effective on April 1, 2024, and has set basic benchmarks for information technology (IT) strategy committees, IT risk management processes & IT assurance functions.

Overall trends' information across all these is clear:  escalating tier requirements as per size and board-led controls are mandatory; a conscious acceptance that there will inevitably be data breaches in the future; and increasing emphasis on response and recovery.

Governance: Where RBI Compliance Actually Starts

A recurring theme across every RBI direction is that cybersecurity cannot be delegated entirely to the IT department. The Board of Directors is expected to own information security risk, with oversight typically delegated to a board subcommittee that meets at least quarterly. A board-approved information security policy, reviewed annually, must define the following:

• Roles and responsibilities across the Board, senior management, and the CISO
• Processes to identify, assess, monitor, and manage cyber risk
• Employee and stakeholder training and awareness programs

RBI's own 2022 thematic review of IT governance across 20 banks found unmanaged third-party vendor access, with vendors retaining privileged access to core systems long after a project ended at more than half the institutions reviewed. That kind of gap is a governance failure as much as a technical one: it happens because nobody owns the review cycle, not because the firewall is misconfigured.

Key Technical and Operational Controls

Once governance is in place, RBI's expectations translate into concrete control domains:

Infrastructure and access hardening: Network segmentation, endpoint protection, server hardening baselines, and multi-factor authentication for privileged access. Access reviews should be continuous or, at minimum, periodic, enforcing least privilege and separation of duties, not a one-time onboarding checkbox.

Vulnerability and patch management: Regular vulnerability scanning, risk-prioritised remediation, and a documented process for feeding vulnerability data into risk decisions, not just a scanner report sitting in an inbox.

Data security and localisation: Encryption at rest, in transit, and during processing; sound key management; data classification and masking; and adherence to the RBI's data localisation requirements for payment data.

Vendor and third-party risk: This has become one of the sharpest areas of regulatory focus. The 2024 PSO Master Directions explicitly require oversight of "unregulated entities" in the payment chain like payment gateways, third-party service providers, and vendors with due diligence, contractual security clauses, and ongoing monitoring baked in. For a bank or fintech, this means your compliance posture is only as strong as your weakest vendor's; the RBI increasingly holds the regulated entity accountable for its partners' failures, not just its own.

Security operations and incident response: 24x7 SOC capability, threat intelligence integration, and tested incident response plans via tabletop exercises and simulated attacks. A Cyber Crisis Management Plan (CCMP) drafted once and never rehearsed is, in practice, treated by RBI examiners as functionally absent.

Incident Reporting

This is where two separate regulatory clocks run in parallel, and conflating them is a common compliance mistake:

• RBI requirements: Regulated entities will normally have around 2-6 hours of detection to report most security incidents to the RBI with follow-up notifications as and when the nature of the incident unfolds.
• CERT-In's 6-hour rule: The CERT-In Directions dated April 2022 stipulate that every body corporate, which includes any bank, NBFC or payment aggregator, is obligated to report specified categories of cyber incidents to CERT-In within 6 hours of noticing them and not after fully confirming details at an additional 6 hours after noticing them. CERT-In directions also mandated that ICT system clocks are to be synced to NIC/NPL time servers, and system logs are to be maintained for a rolling 180 days within India.
• The Digital Personal Data Protection Act overlay: In the case of a data breach involving personal data, there will additionally be a 72-hour notification obligation from the data fiduciary to the Data Protection Board under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, which runs in parallel to, and not in substitution of, the CERT-In time.

The practical consequences: If an SOP for incident response only maps one regime, then it would fail in an actual incident. We need a single intake process whereby multiple notification tracks are automatically triggered at the precise time an incident is detected, given that the inability to report "because we were still figuring it out" does not constitute an acceptable justification for a late notification under either regime.

Why Penetration Testing Sits at the Center of Compliance

RBI's VAPT (Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing) mandate isn't a box-ticking annual scan. It's meant to validate, under real attack conditions, whether the governance and technical controls described above actually hold up. Automated scanning finds known vulnerabilities; penetration testing, ideally combining automated coverage with manual, business-context-aware testing, finds the logic flaws, chained exploits, and privilege escalation paths that scanners miss and that attackers actually use.

For most regulated entities, a realistic testing cadence looks like:

1. Semi-annual vulnerability assessments across critical systems
2. Annual (at minimum) penetration testing of applications, networks, and infrastructure supporting payment and customer-data systems
3. Testing triggered by events before go-live, after major changes, and post-deployment.
4. Documented remediation cycles and rescans, with reports mapped directly to the relevant compliance clauses for audit purposes

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

RBI's enforcement history grounds the financial impact of enforcement actions. In addition to the May 2025 fines levied on ICICI, Axis, IDBI, Bank of Baroda and Bank of Maharashtra, the RBI's published Enforcement Guidelines differentiate three levels of severity; procedural breaches such as delayed policy review or late incident notifications usually warrant 10 lakh to 1 crore fines plus formal reprimands and remediation orders with deadlines. Recurring governance breaches go farther than fines, resulting in restrictions on business activities and more stringent supervisory reporting, with egregious breaches leading to inclusion under the RBI's Prompt Corrective Action regime. Penalty orders are also publicly available, and the resulting toll on customer trust, partner trust, and investor confidence often dwarfs the fines.

A Practical Implementation Roadmap

For an organisation building or maturing its RBI compliance programme, a sensible sequence looks like this:

1. Establish board-level ownership first: Form or formalise the Board IT/Risk sub-committee, appoint or empower a CISO with real authority, and get the information security policy formally approved, and this is the foundation every RBI examiner checks first.
2. Mapping: A mid-sized NBFC, a large payment aggregator, and a scheduled commercial bank face different, overlapping obligations. Get this scoping wrong and you'll either over-engineer or leave gaps.
3. Secure third-party access: Audit every vendor with system access, revoke stale privileges, and build vendor security clauses into contracts going forward, not retroactively.
4. Build one incident response SOP: Run one compiled playbook that satisfies RBI, Cert-In and DPDP.
5. Schedule and actually rehearse tabletop exercises: not just write a CCMP and file it away.
6. Institutionalise VAPT as a continuous, risk-triggered programme rather than an annual compliance event, and ensure reports are structured to map directly onto RBI's compliance clauses for audit readiness.
7. Track the regulatory calendar actively: 2024–2026 has brought new NBFC directions, PSO phase-ins, and ITG-RC&AP obligations in quick succession, and the pace shows no sign of slowing.

Conclusion

RBI's shift from perimeter-focused prevention to a risk-based, resilience-first model reflects a broader reality: in a digital payments ecosystem processing billions of transactions a month, breaches are not a hypothetical to plan around; they're an operational certainty to plan for. The frameworks discussed here, cyber resilience directions, IT governance mandates, CERT-In's reporting clock and the new NBFC cybersecurity directions aren't separate hurdles to clear individually. They're converging into a single expectation: that regulated entities can detect an incident quickly, contain it, recover fast, and prove with documentation, tested plans, and independent penetration test evidence that they were ready for it in the first place.

For banks, NBFCs, and fintechs operating in India today, that readiness is no longer just a regulatory requirement. It's the baseline cost of operating in the financial system at all.

References

• https://www.getastra.com/blog/compliance/rbi-cybersecurity-compliance-checklist/

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Sources

1. Astra Security — RBI Cybersecurity Compliance Checklist for Banks & NBFCs in 2026: https://www.getastra.com/blog/compliance/rbi-cybersecurity-compliance-checklist/ 
2. TaxGuru — RBI Issues NBFC Cybersecurity and Technology Risk Directions, 2026: https://taxguru.in/rbi/rbi-issues-nbfc-cybersecurity-technology-risk-directions-2026-governance-framework.html 
3. Mondaq — Cyber Resilience and Digital Payment Security Governance (Master Directions, 2024): https://www.mondaq.com/india/fin-tech/1527836/cyber-resilience-and-digital-payment-security-governance-a-step-towards-secured-payments-systems 
4. TaxGuru — Master Directions on Cyber Resilience & Digital Payment Security Controls for Non-bank PSOs: https://taxguru.in/rbi/master-directions-cyber-resilience-digital-payment-security-controls-non-bank-payment-system-operators.html 
5. CyberNX — Ultimate Guide on RBI Master Directions for Cyber Resilience: https://www.cybernx.com/rbi-master-directions-guide/ 
6. SIRI Law LLP — A Comprehensive Guide to India's CERT-In 6-Hour Cyber Incident Reporting Mandate: https://sirilawllp.com/a-comprehensive-guide-to-indias-cert-in-6-hour-cyber-incident-reporting-mandate/ 
7. CreativeCyber — CERT-In 6-Hour Incident Reporting SOP for Indian Banks & NBFCs: https://creativecyber.in/resources/cert-in-6-hour-incident-reporting/ 
8. BW Businessworld — RBI Slaps Penalties on ICICI, Axis and Three Others Over Compliance Failures (May 2025): https://www.businessworld.in/article/rbi-slaps-penalties-on-icici-axis-three-others-over-compliance-failures-555643 
9. FluxForce — RBI Cyber Framework: Banks' Requirements & Penalties: https://www.fluxforce.ai/regulations/rbi-cyber-security-framework-banks 
10. MYITMANAGER — RBI Cybersecurity Guidelines 2026: What Banks and NBFCs Must Do: https://myitmanager.in/rbi-cybersecurity-guidelines-2026-banks-nbfcs/

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Executive Summary

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Following the results of the recent West Bengal elections, a video of former Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar has gone viral on social media. In the clip, Kumar is seen questioning television news channels over their election-result coverage and alleged early “trends” before the actual counting process begins. In the viral video, Rajiv Kumar can be heard saying, “When counting begins, channels start showing trends from 8:05 AM itself, which is nonsense. The first round of counting starts only at 8:30 AM. We have evidence that leads were being shown before that. Is it possible that these early trends are shown just to justify exit polls?”The video is being widely shared with the claim that Kumar made these remarks after the recently concluded West Bengal Assembly elections Research conducted by CyberPeace Research Wing found that a 2024 video of former Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar is being misleadingly shared as a recent statement made after the West Bengal election results.

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Claim

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An Instagram user shared the viral clip suggesting that the former Election Commissioner made these comments in the context of the latest West Bengal poll results.

• https://www.instagram.com/reels/DX57MsWpmrz/
• https://ghostarchive.org/archive/Au6mU 

Fact Check

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Using relevant keyword searches, we traced the original source of the clip to an official post shared by the Election Commission of Indiaon Facebook on October 15, 2024. The video was part of a press conference announcing the Assembly election schedule for Maharashtra and Jharkhand.

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We also found the complete live-streamed press conference on the official YouTube channel of the Election Commission.

• https://www.youtube.com/live/-EmQtNWd9vU

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During the press conference, around the 26:45-minute mark, an ANI journalist referred to discrepancies between exit polls and actual Lok Sabha election results and asked whether such situations fuel doubts over EVMs among the public. Responding to the question at around 30:27 minutes, Rajiv Kumar spoke about the need for self-regulation in electronic media and concerns over premature “trends” shown during counting day. He said that exit polls often create public expectations despite lacking a clear scientific basis and questioned why TV channels begin displaying leads even before the first official counting round starts.

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Conclusion

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The viral claim is misleading. The video of former Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar is not related to the recent West Bengal election results. The clip is from an October 15, 2024 press conference held to announce the Maharashtra and Jharkhand Assembly election schedule and is now being falsely shared in a misleading context after the West Bengal polls.

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Introduction

Advanced deepfake technology blurs the line between authentic and fake. To ascertain the credibility of the content it has become important to differentiate between genuine and manipulated or curated online content highly shared on social media platforms. AI-generated fake voice clone, videos are proliferating on the Internet and social media. There is the use of sophisticated AI algorithms that help manipulate or generate synthetic multimedia content such as audio, video and images. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between genuine, altered, or fake multimedia content. McAfee Corp., a well-known or popular global leader in online protection, has recently launched an AI-powered deepfake audio detection technology under Project “Mockingbird” intending to safeguard consumers against the surging threat of fabricated or AI-generated audio or voice clones to dupe people for money or unauthorisly obtaining their personal information. McAfee Corp. announced its AI-powered deepfake audio detection technology, known as Project Mockingbird, at the Consumer Electronics Show, 2024.

What is voice cloning?

To create a voice clone of anyone's, audio can be deeplyfaked, too, which closely resembles a real voice but, in actuality, is a fake voice created through deepfake technology. 

Emerging Threats: Cybercriminal Exploitation of Artificial Intelligence in Identity Fraud, Voice Cloning, and Hacking Acceleration

AI is used for all kinds of things from smart tech to robotics and gaming. Cybercriminals are misusing artificial intelligence for rather nefarious reasons including voice cloning to commit cyber fraud activities. Artificial intelligence can be used to manipulate the lips of an individual so it looks like they're saying something different, it could also be used for identity fraud to make it possible to impersonate someone for a remote verification for your bank and it also makes traditional hacking more convenient. Cybercriminals have been misusing advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, which has led to an increase in the speed and volume of cyber attacks, and that's been the theme in recent times.

Technical Analysis

To combat Audio cloning fraudulent activities, McAfee Labs has developed a robust AI model that precisely detects artificially generated audio used in videos or otherwise.

• Context-Based Recognition: Contextual assessment is used by technological devices to examine audio components in the overall setting of an audio. It improves the model's capacity to recognise discrepancies suggestive of artificial intelligence-generated audio by evaluating its surroundings information.
• Conductual Examination: Psychological detection techniques examine linguistic habits and subtleties, concentrating on departures from typical individual behaviour. Examining speech patterns, tempo, and pronunciation enables the model to identify artificially or synthetically produced material.
• Classification Models: Auditory components are categorised by categorisation algorithms for detection according to established traits of human communication. The technology differentiates between real and artificial intelligence-synthesized voices by comparing them against an extensive library of legitimate human speech features.
• Accuracy Outcomes: McAfee Labs' deepfake voice recognition solution, which boasts an impressive ninety per cent success rate, is based on a combined approach incorporating psychological, context-specific, and categorised identification models. Through examining audio components in the larger video context and examining speech characteristics, such as intonation, rhythm, and pronunciation, the system can identify discrepancies that could be signs of artificial intelligence-produced audio. Categorical models make an additional contribution by classifying audio information according to characteristics of known human speech. This all-encompassing strategy is essential for precisely recognising and reducing the risks connected to AI-generated audio data, offering a strong barrier against the growing danger of deepfake situations.
• Application Instances: The technique protects against various harmful programs, such as celebrity voice-cloning fraud and misleading content about important subjects.

Conclusion

It is important to foster ethical and responsible consumption of technology. Awareness of common uses of artificial intelligence is a first step toward broader public engagement with debates about the appropriate role and boundaries for AI. Project Mockingbird by Macafee employs AI-driven deepfake audio detection to safeguard against cyber criminals who are using fabricated AI-generated audio for scams and manipulating the public image of notable figures, protecting consumers from financial and personal information risks. 

References:

• https://www.cnbctv18.com/technology/mcafee-deepfake-audio-detection-technology-against-rise-in-ai-generated-misinformation-18740471.htm
• https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/mcafee-unveils-advanced-deepfake-audio-detection-technology/article67718951.ece
• https://lifestyle.livemint.com/smart-living/innovation/ces-2024-mcafee-ai-technology-audio-project-mockingbird-111704714835601.html
• https://news.abplive.com/fact-check/audio-deepfakes-adding-to-cacophony-of-online-misinformation-abpp-1654724