India’s financial sector is undergoing a pivotal transformation in cybersecurity expectations. With the rise in insider fraud, API vulnerabilities, and third-party exposures, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has introduced the Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF). This regulation establishes new standards for financial institutions in India regarding cyber governance, threat detection, and incident response.
The CSCRF mandates that regulated entities demonstrate their ability to detect, respond to, and recover from cyber threats in real-time. This includes stringent requirements such as board-level oversight, direct CISO-to-CEO reporting, and mandatory incident reporting within six hours of threat detection. These changes are reshaping how financial institutions approach security, shifting from reactive defense to proactive resilience.
The CSCRF applies to a broad range of entities, including Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs), such as stock exchanges, clearing corporations, and depositories, as well as intermediaries, such as stockbrokers, asset management companies, mutual funds, portfolio managers, and credit rating agencies.
Under this framework, organizations must establish cybersecurity governance at the board level, ensure direct reporting from the CISO to the CEO, and maintain continuous monitoring through a fully operational Security Operations Center (SOC). Moreover, they are required to report cybersecurity incidents within six hours of detection, conduct regular resilience tests, including vulnerability assessments and disaster recovery drills, and evaluate the cybersecurity posture of third-party vendors.
The Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF) introduced by SEBI marks a significant shift in how India’s financial institutions approach cybersecurity. This framework is designed to ensure that organizations can not only defend against cyber threats but also recover quickly and maintain operational continuity. Key mandates include:
These requirements reflect SEBI’s push for proactive, intelligence-driven security across India’s Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) sector. The urgency is underscored by recent incidents involving insider fraud, API exposures, and supply chain vulnerabilities, all of which have impacted consumer trust and financial stability.
In this evolving regulatory landscape, Gurucul has emerged as a critical enabler of cybersecurity resilience for India’s financial institutions. As a global leader in behavior-based security analytics, Gurucul delivers a powerful combination of AI-powered Next-Gen SIEM, User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA), and AI-driven SOC automation. These integrated capabilities are purpose-built to help organizations meet SEBI’s stringent requirements for CSCRF while simultaneously enhancing operational efficiency, improving threat-detection accuracy, and streamlining compliance workflows.
Gurucul AI-Powered Next-Gen SIEM: Intelligent Monitoring for Rapid Response: Gurucul’s Next-Gen SIEM is built to address these challenges head-on. It offers real-time AI-driven threat detection powered by thousands of machine learning models, enabling organizations to identify and respond to threats quickly and accurately. The platform’s behavioral analytics significantly reduce false positives, allowing security teams to focus on genuine risks. Automated triage and investigation workflows streamline incident response, while intelligent Data Pipeline Management(DPM) ensures scalable, cost-effective data ingestion and complete control over data. This provides centralized visibility, rapid detection, and scalable security operations—core pillars of SEBI’s mandate.
UEBA: Behavioral Intelligence for Insider Threats and Fraud Detection: Complementing SIEM capabilities, Gurucul’s User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) provides deep visibility into insider threats, privilege misuse, and identity-based anomalies. By baselining normal behavior patterns and detecting deviations, UEBA enables organizations to identify fraud and policy violations that traditional rule-based systems often overlook. This behavioral intelligence is essential for meeting CSCRF’s requirements related to governance, data protection, and misuse monitoring.
AI SOC Analyst: Automating Compliance and Response: The AI SOC Analyst triages and acts at machine speed, reducing the Mean Time to Respond (MTTR), which aligns with the six-hour reporting requirements mandated by SEBI. This AI-driven tool automates alert triage, conducts contextual investigations, and generates natural-language reports ready for regulatory audits. With human-in-the-loop feedback, the AI SOC Analyst remains transparent and continuously improves, helping organizations meet the six-hour incident reporting requirement while reducing analyst fatigue and accelerating response times. The outcome is 24/7/365 coverage by a virtual analyst, significantly increasing SOC efficiency.
Gurucul’s platform supports a comprehensive range of use cases aligned with SEBI’s Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF) controls. These include governance monitoring to detect policy violations and misuse of privileged access; fraud detection powered by behavioral analytics; AI-driven User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) to identify insider threats; AI-generated incident timelines for post-mortem analysis; and vendor risk scoring to evaluate third-party exposure.
| CSCRF Control Area | Gurucul Capability |
| Governance & Risk Management | Role-based access, policy violation detection, and audit trails |
| Threat Detection & Monitoring | AI-Powered Next-Gen SIEM, UEBA, Real-time analytics, Insider Threats, Fraud |
| Incident Response | AI-generated timelines, automated triage, and remediation recommendations |
| Third-Party Risk | Risk scoring, behavioral indicators |
| Compliance Reporting | Custom dashboards and reporting, natural language incident summaries |
As SEBI’s Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF) continues to redefine cybersecurity standards across India’s financial sector, Gurucul stands out as a strategic partner for institutions aiming to meet regulatory expectations and build enduring cyber resilience. Whether supporting large Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs) or smaller intermediaries operating shared SOCs, Gurucul’s unified platform delivers the intelligence, automation, and flexibility required to thrive in this new compliance era.
Gurucul’s Next-Gen SIEM is designed to meet the core priorities of SEBI’s CSCRF. These include real-time threat monitoring, fast incident response, strong governance, and cost-effective operations. The platform uses over 4,000 pre-tuned machine learning models, along with behavioral analytics, identity intelligence, and big data context, to deliver smarter, more accurate threat detection. Gurucul’s Data Pipeline Management (DPM) also helps reduce costs. It optimizes data ingestion and can cut costs by up to 87%, without sacrificing visibility or control. Organizations using Gurucul see up to 70% fewer false positives, an 83% increase in MTTR, and a 40–60% improvement in detection speed(MTTD). This helps them respond to threats faster and meet SEBI’s six-hour incident reporting requirement.
With full deployment flexibility across SaaS, cloud, on-premises, and self-hosted environments, Gurucul ensures feature parity and scalability. This makes it a strong fit for both large MIIs and smaller intermediaries. Gurucul helps financial institutions go beyond just meeting compliance requirements — it enables them to take the lead in building strong, resilient cybersecurity programs.
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About the Author:
Nagesh Swamy, Product Marketing Manager
Nagesh Swamy is a seasoned product marketer at Gurucul with 15+ years of expertise across cybersecurity, IT infrastructure, and enterprise software. He has spearheaded go-to-market campaigns, competitive intelligence programs, and global product launches for marquee brands like Zscaler, Securonix, Wipro, HP, IBM, and EMC.
SEBI’s CSCRF is a regulatory framework designed to enhance cybersecurity governance, threat detection, and incident response across India’s financial institutions. It mandates board-level oversight, real-time threat monitoring, and incident reporting within six hours.
Gurucul provides an AI-powered, unified cybersecurity platform that combines Next-Gen SIEM, UEBA, and AI SOC Analyst capabilities. These tools enable real-time threat detection, insider fraud prevention, and automated incident response aligned with CSCRF mandates.
AI-driven threat detection ensures rapid identification and response to cyber threats, reducing false positives and improving SOC efficiency. Gurucul’s machine learning models support continuous monitoring and compliance with SEBI’s six-hour incident reporting rule.
Gurucul’s UEBA analyzes user and entity behavior to detect anomalies, misuse of privileges, and insider threats. This behavioral intelligence is essential for meeting CSCRF’s governance and misuse monitoring requirements.
Yes, Gurucul includes vendor risk scoring and third-party exposure analysis, helping financial institutions evaluate and manage supply chain vulnerabilities as required by CSCRF.
