CSO 100 India Agenda
Explore the latest event agenda below, and check back soon for updates.
Thursday, May 14
AI is accelerating both innovation and threats—forcing CISOs to rethink security at machine speed. This roundtable brings together peers to discuss a simple 5-step approach to securing AI, while leveraging AI to strengthen security operations.
Expect a highly interactive session with live Kahoot polls to gauge perspectives, spark discussion, and benchmark maturity. The focus will be on practical, actionable takeaways Security Leaders can apply immediately—across securing AI, securing with AI, and building towards an autonomous SOC
As enterprise AI adoption accelerates, organizations are moving beyond experimentation and into a new phase defined by operational scale, economic sustainability, governance, and measurable business impact. Technology leaders are now under increasing pressure to answer critical questions around AI ROI, infrastructure cost, security, and long-term control of enterprise AI environments.
This closed-door executive roundtable brings together senior IT and business technology leaders to explore how organizations are reshaping their AI strategies around:
- open-source LLMs,
- sovereign AI architectures,
- infrastructure efficiency,
- and secure, scalable AI deployment models.
As Generative AI accelerates development cycles, Application Security stands at a critical juncture between enabling speed and ensuring resilience. This session explores the dual reality of AppSec in the AI era: securing AI-generated code and protecting LLM-integrated applications. Join us to map the road ahead, discussing how to evolve your AppSec strategy to withstand the velocity and complexity of next-gen software supply chains.
AI, cloud, and the increasingly interconnected nature of business and technology present CISOs with a range of risks and threats that will be particularly challenging this year. Cybersecurity leaders have a lot to consider when trying to keep their organizations safe. But some things stand out more than others or might be under the radar. The session will decode 5 things CISOs should avoid falling short on in 2026.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how security teams detect and hunt cyber threats by helping analyze vast volumes of security data, uncovering subtle signs of malicious activity, and identifying potential attacks faster than traditional tools or human analysts alone. However, the traditional non -AI threats refuse to slow down, adding to the complexity to CISO and their teams’ preparedness and risk to their business.
As the digital landscape shifts toward autonomous defense and identity-centric security, the mandate of the modern CSO has never been more complex. This keynote explores the critical forces reshaping 2026 from the rise of agentic AI and quantum-readiness to the pressure of global regulatory alignment. Join us to unpack the strategic roadmap for the year ahead and learn how to transform looming disruptions into measurable business resilience.
The CSO 100 Special Awards will recognize select security leaders who have successfully implemented Cloud Security & AI Security across high priority areas.
The CSO 100 Special Awards will recognize select security leaders who have successfully implemented Zero Trust Technology across high priority areas.
The CSO 100 Special Awards will recognize select security leaders who have successfully implemented Data Security across high priority areas.
The CSO 100 Special Awards will recognize select security leaders who have successfully implemented technologies across application security and cloud.
The CSO 100 Special Awards will recognize select security leaders who have successfully implemented technologies across GRC, IT-OT, SOC related and new emerging technologies.
The Game Changers Awards will recognize cybersecurity leaders who have used IT innovatively to bolster cybersecurity posture and drive business value at their organization.
Friday, May 15
The first day set the foundation; now we build the strategy. Join us for a 15-minute briefing to connect the dots from yesterday’s discussions. We’ll revisit the most provocative insights from our Day 1 keynotes & panel discussions before shifting focus to Day 2.
Companies continue to grapple with a highly complex and active cybersecurity landscape. While AI promises to simplify and improve safeguards, it also opens doors to new risks. As adversaries get more creative and aggressive, security organizations see value in AI as a means to quickly analyze massive datasets, allowing them to more easily pinpoint vulnerabilities and automate threat response. CSO’s 2025 Security Priorities survey confirmed that there is a mounting interest in integrating AI into cybersecurity strategies.
This session redefines the role of the CISO in an AI-driven enterprise, moving beyond traditional security into strategic governance of intelligent systems. It explores how AI introduces new layers of risk like legal, ethical, and operational and why CISOs must lead the design of robust governance frameworks. Participants will gain insights into aligning AI with enterprise risk management, ensuring accountability, and navigating evolving regulations like the EU AI Act. The session positions CISOs as key architects of trust, resilience, and responsible AI adoption in modern organizations.
This keynote explores VI’s pioneering leap into the future of cybersecurity by transitioning from traditional SOC models to a fully autonomous, AI-driven operations platform designed for the 2026 digital landscape. By integrating cutting-edge generative AI and predictive modeling, VI is effectively neutralizing sophisticated 5G-era threats in real-time while shifting the security paradigm from reactive response to proactive resilience.
AI-powered bots have evolved into autonomous agents capable of mimicking human behaviour and executing complex multi-step attacks, fundamentally reshaping the perimeter threat landscape. As adversarial tactics scale through agentic AI, organizations must rethink how they detect, disrupt, and defend at the edge. This session explores how AWS leverages massive- scale threat intelligence — analysing over 400 trillion network flows daily — and innovations like the MadPot honeypot system to proactively neutralize next-generation threats before they reach customers.
Prevention alone is no longer sufficient – resilience now defines security leadership. In an AI-driven world, outcomes depend on the integrity, accessibility, and governance of data. This session outlines a pragmatic blueprint for cyber readiness, focusing on governed access across human and machine identities, and ensuring data remains trustworthy and recoverable. Balaji Rao explores approaches to isolating, validating, and restoring data while maintaining control and oversight. By aligning security, recovery, and automation, organizations can strengthen resilience and maintain continuity – enabling AI systems to operate on trusted data. The session reframes resilience as a strategic enabler in an evolving threat landscape.
As India marches toward the “Viksit Bharat 2047” vision, the focus has shifted from mere digital adoption to strategic digital sovereignty. This session explores how 2026’s leading Indian enterprises are moving beyond reactive “firefighting” to build self-healing infrastructures and indigenous AI-driven defense layers. We will analyze the impact of the latest national cybersecurity policies and how a resilience first mindset is safeguarding India’s critical infrastructure from UPI ecosystems to Aadhaar-linked digital identities.
An interactive expert panel unpacking the surge in AI-driven cyber threats, from generative deepfakes to autonomous attack scripts, and how Indian enterprises can leverage AI defensively.
In an era of software-defined factories and agentic AI, the collision of IT and OT ecosystems has created a multi-dimensional attack surface that legacy tools can no longer protect. This session deconstructs the 2026 blueprint for a “unified security fabric,” moving beyond traditional segmentation to autonomous, real-time monitoring across all levels of the Purdue model. We will analyze how to govern non-human identities and secure autonomous model pipelines without disrupting critical production uptime.
A leadership-focused CSO panel on the human capital and governance dimension, addressing India’s 30 -50% cybersecurity skills deficit and rising CISO accountability.
With the 2025 notification of the DPDP Rules, 2026 marks the definitive shift from policy awareness to operational execution. This session deconstructs the phased compliance timeline, focusing on the immediate 2026 milestones for “Significant Data Fiduciaries” and the new requirements for India based Consent Managers. Join us to explore how the Digital First Data Protection Board is beginning to adjudicate breaches and what these first-wave rulings mean for your organization’s privacy roadmap in 2026 and beyond.
The growth momentum of FinTechs in India isn’t slowing down. As cyber threats evolve, FinTech companies are continually adopting next-gen cybersecurity tools and develop strategies to protect their innovation, modernize their Apps and secure their ecosystem. AI is an opportunity as well as roadblock for companies to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated threats. How will companies prioritize cybersecurity while battling AI landscape to thread the journey in 2026 and beyond?
In 2026, the CSO’s mandate has expanded from defending the perimeter to architecting the trust layer for a machine-speed enterprise. This session explores the transformation of the role from a “no-saying” gatekeeper to a strategic partner who enables rapid AI adoption through autonomous governance and agentic risk management. Join us to learn how today’s most successful CSOs are leveraging AI to secure the business while simultaneously driving top-line growth and organizational resilience.
While we focus on AI governance and policies, a new breed of agentic models is being weaponized at scale. The session will talk on past the hype of Management of Security to Frontier of Offensive AI. How can CISOs and CIOs move to a “response only” architecture that may survive the malicious LLM. How is TCG Lifesciences living up to the Mythos Moment? The keynote will share best practices on defending against Autonomous Offensive AI.
A panel linking privacy, compliance, and trust – essential for India’s ambition to become a global digital hub by 2030.
As India cements its tech leadership, the convergence of AI adoption and a complex threat landscape has revealed a 40% cybersecurity talent gap. This keynote at the CSO 100 Awards & Conference 2026 India explores the shift from traditional hiring to human-AI augmentation. We will examine how CISOs leverage Agentic AI to bridge this expertise chasm, discussing frameworks for upskilling and securing AI-first infrastructure. The session aims to transform junior defenders into high-impact analysts, turning a systemic shortage into a competitive advantage while providing a roadmap for resilience against the velocity of AI-driven crime.
Bots and AI agents are no longer just a security concern — they are reshaping how businesses acquire customers, protect revenue, and maintain digital trust. Fraudulent sign-ups inflate acquisition costs, automated scraping erodes competitive advantage, fake engagement distorts business metrics, and account takeover directly impacts customer retention. As automated traffic becomes indistinguishable from real users, how are businesses rethinking their trust models, revenue protection strategies, and customer experience to stay resilient?
Most large organizations today operate a sprawling mix of disconnected identity and security systems spanning on-premises infrastructure, cloud, and SaaS while simultaneously managing human, machine, and the rapidly emerging category of agentic AI identities. Each environment may be secured in isolation, but that is precisely the problem: when every team owns their own silo, no one owns the risk that lives between them. There is no shared line of sight, no unified accountability, and no common picture of who or what has access to what, across the enterprise. This roundtable at CSO 100 Awards & Conference 2026 will bring together India’s top security leaders to explore a provocative but necessary reframe: that the missing link in securing modern enterprises is not more controls, but greater visibility and what it will practically take to turn fragmented access landscapes into actionable identity intelligence.
There is no shortage of theories on data security, but real-world implementation is where the challenges lie. In this candid roundtable, we will strip away the hype to discuss the concrete “Dos and Don’ts” of overhauling a security framework in a live enterprise environment. Exchange insights with your peers on what actually works and what doesn’t when aligning security initiatives with rapid business transformation.
The Hall of Fame awards will recognize CSOs who have received the CSO 100 award for 3 or more consecutive years while serving at the same organisation.
The Fearless 100 awards will recognize 100 CSOs & CISOs for outstanding leadership & Innovation.
Saturday, May 16
Traditional monitoring can no longer keep pace with the volume of modern threats. This roundtable brings together India’s top security leaders to discuss how the SIEM market is shifting toward smarter, faster systems of action focusing on how to cut through the noise of ‘alert fatigue’ to achieve true machine-speed response.
This session explores the convergence of SIEM, XDR, and Data Lakes to eliminate silos and accelerate investigations. Focused on India’s data sovereignty laws, we will discuss balancing high-speed ingestion with cost-effective retention. By fusing human intuition with automation, we aim to redefine MTTD and MTTR benchmarks for 2026.
As the DPDP Act moves into its first full year of active enforcement, the grace period for ‘intent’ has ended, and the era of ‘evidence’ has begun. This roundtable brings together India’s top security leaders to discuss the 2026 reality of operationalizing 72-hour breach reporting, managing the ‘Consent Manager’ ecosystem, and navigating the boardroom’s heightened accountability for data fiduciaries. Join your peers to evaluate how these mandates are reshaping enterprise risk, vendor ecosystems, and the very definition of digital trust in a post-compliance landscape.
Forty-eight hours of networking, 1:1 meetings, and deep-tech insights have led us here. To kick off the final day, join us for a 15-minute retrospective on the most impactful moments from Days 1 and 2. We’ll revisit the key takeaways that are redefining the CISO’s role in an “AI-everywhere” era before setting the stage for our final series of sessions.
In an era of rising digital protectionism, navigating the patchwork of global data sovereignty laws from GDPR to emerging local mandates is a defining challenge for modern CSOs. This session brings together senior editors to dissect the collision between cross border business needs and increasingly strict localization requirements.
As India accelerates into an AI-driven digital future, cybersecurity is no longer limited to systems and controls. It increasingly depends on how individuals interpret information and make decisions. UNESCO’s Media and Information Literacy (MIL) competencies bring focus to this human layer, positioning informed thinking as a critical capability in managing complex risk environments.
This session underscores the need for informed thinking in complex situations, highlighting how MIL translates into ethical, responsible AI and more effective decision-making to secure digital India at scale.
Protecting industrial tech isn’t just about better tools; it’s about leaders deciding in advance who calls the shots when a crisis hits the factory floor. Boards do not need to become technical experts in OT. They do need to demand decision-grade oversight. Board directors should ask management to clarify decision rights, define the top OT cyber scenarios, establish an enterprise minimum baseline for priority environments and run independent assurance on the sites or operations that matter most. How is Godrej navigating the IT-OT security landscape along with the board?
In 2026, the question is no longer “what the law says,” but “can your systems prove it?” This session analyzes the technical hurdles DPOs face in implementing automated data erasure, purpose limitation, and the mandatory one-year log retention required under the 2025 Rules. We will examine the emerging role of India-based Consent Managers and provide a strategic roadmap for CSOs to ensure that compliance doesn’t become a bottleneck for digital innovation and AI adoption.
The old way of manual IT upgrades is dying; now, smart AI agents can basically rebuild the tech stack themselves if leaders are brave enough to let go of the wheel. The question ahead for CIOs is not how to modernize faster, but how to govern autonomy at scale and close the cultural readiness gap before unlocking the efficiency, scale and responsiveness of agentic modernization enables.
The facilitated roundtable workshop with scenario-based discussion aims to enable peer learning, strategic discussion, and practical decision-making under pressure. And how C-suite executives and stakeholders of an organization can work in tandem to minimize the risk, protect the brand identity and lessen the financial damage in an increased environment of cyberattacks.
A session to honor the strategic alliances and collaborative spirit that fuel our collective success. We extend our deepest gratitude to our partners for their unwavering support and vital contributions to the industry.