The Centre has reportedly asked homegrown AI unicorn Sarvam AI and BharatGen to develop advanced cybersecurity capabilities similar to Anthropic’s Mythos as India looks to decrease reliance on foreign frontier models for protecting critical infrastructure.
The models are expected to be hosted on the government’s isolated compute infrastructure and deployed to protect critical infrastructure from cyberattacks, ET reported, citing officials. However, no timeline has been specified for the development of the capabilities.
Currently, the government is using a combination of open-source and indigenous AI models, including Sarvam, to identify and plug security gaps in critical infrastructure.
The national cybersecurity body, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), has been testing alternative AI models in a sandbox environment to identify vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure.
MeitY secretary S Krishnan recently said that CERT-In’s combination of models currently delivers about 60-70% of Mythos’ capabilities and is being used to probe code, identify security gaps, and fix vulnerabilities.
“What this gives us is an opportunity now to actually identify many of these vulnerabilities and correct them. Clearly, getting access to Mythos and similar advanced frontier models is very high on the priority of the government, and this is something that we have taken up with our counterparts in the US and with the respective companies,” Krishnan was quoted as saying by PTI.
For highly sensitive infrastructure, Krishnan said an “on-premises” deployment within India would be essential instead of relying entirely on cloud services hosted overseas.
This comes as India continues to be in talks with Anthropic and the US for access to the company’s cybersecurity-focused Mythos model. While the company’s ‘Project Glasswing’ programme was expanded to around 150 organisations across more than 15 countries, including India, last month, wider access for Indian banks and public sector entities remains uncertain.
Meanwhile, a report said that a department under MeitY asked central ministries to hold off on deploying OpenAI and Anthropic models for cybersecurity, warning against their premature use.
Why India Wants Indigenous Cybersecurity AI
The growing use of AI in cybersecurity presents governments with a dilemma. AI models capable of analysing software code and identifying previously unknown vulnerabilities can help organisations secure their systems. But the same capabilities could also enable attackers to discover and exploit those vulnerabilities faster.
These concerns have shaped Anthropic’s rollout of Mythos, with access to the cyber-focused model limited to select organisations.
Building similar capabilities at home will take time, but cyberattackers are moving fast. The average time taken to exploit an unknown vulnerability dropped to 44 days in FY26 from 745 days in FY22, according to a DSCI-BCG report. Cyberattacks in India, meanwhile, rose to 2.9 Mn from 1.4 Mn over the same period.
India’s efforts to build Mythos-like capabilities through Sarvam AI and BharatGen, alongside CERT-In’s evaluation of other AI models, reflect a broader push to develop sovereign cybersecurity capabilities and reduce dependence on foreign frontier AI models for securing critical infrastructure.
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