India, Oct. 13 -- As AI agents gain autonomy, India faces a new cybersecurity challenge

The Election Commission of India (ECI) and its ECINET digital platform have been in the news in recent weeks. But there is another reason ECINET deserves attention: the scale of cyber threats already confronting India's election infrastructure. During the May 2026 counting day, ECINET's cybersecurity protocols successfully countered more than 68 lakh malicious hits targeting key election platforms, including the results portal, according to the Government. ECINET recorded an average of three crore hits every minute that day.

These were conventional cyber threats. But a new kind of threat is emerging, one in which the attacker itself could be an AI ag...