TLDR: A recent study by Zscaler’s ThreatLabz highlights India as the leading target in the Asia-Pacific Japan (APJ) region for sophisticated, AI-powered phishing attacks. Globally, India ranked second among targeted countries, with over 80 million phishing attempts detected in 2024. The report indicates a global shift from high-volume email blasts to more targeted, AI-fueled attacks designed to evade traditional defenses.
The Zscaler ThreatLabz 2025 Phishing Report, analyzing over two billion blocked phishing attempts on the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™ between January and December 2024, reveals a significant evolution in the global phishing landscape. While global phishing volumes saw a 20% decline, largely attributed to enhanced email authentication protocols, the nature of these threats has become far more sophisticated and targeted, driven by the pervasive use of Generative AI by cybercriminals.
India has emerged as a critical hotspot, leading the Asia-Pacific Japan (APJ) region in phishing volume and ranking second globally among targeted nations. In 2024 alone, over 80 million phishing attempts were detected in India, constituting approximately 33% of the APJ region’s total phishing activity. Interestingly, India also featured as the ninth-largest country of origin for these attacks.
The report details the sectors most heavily impacted in India during 2024. The technology sector bore the brunt with over 24.5 million incidents, followed by the services sector with more than 19.1 million attempts. Manufacturing recorded approximately 17.7 million attacks, while the finance and insurance sector faced nearly 11.9 million.
Deepen Desai, CSO and Head of Security Research at Zscaler, emphasized the changing dynamics of cyber threats: “The phishing game has changed. Attackers are using GenAI to create near-flawless lures and even outsmart AI-based defenses. Cybercriminals are weaponizing AI to evade detection and manipulate victims, which means organizations must leverage equally advanced AI-powered defenses to outpace these emerging threats.”
Echoing this sentiment, Suvabrata Sinha, CISO-in-residence, India at Zscaler, commented on India’s vulnerability: “India’s digital acceleration has made it a ripe target for attackers leveraging advanced AI tools to deceive users and compromise systems. The new wave of phishing campaigns is not just opportunistic, it’s calculated, context-aware, and often linguistically tailored to trick even well-trained users. A Zero Trust strategy, reinforced with AI-driven threat detection and containment, is essential to mitigating these highly evolved threats.”
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The report also highlights broader trends, including the rise of vishing (voice phishing) and deepfake phishing, as well as a surge in tech support and job scams, which accounted for over 159 million incidents in 2024. Microsoft remains the most impersonated brand globally, featuring in 51.7% of phishing attacks. Zscaler advocates for a robust Zero Trust and AI-driven defense strategy as critical to combating these increasingly precise and evasive threats.
