Even as US President Donald Trump levies trade tariffs on a host of countries, triggering uncertainty and anxiety among exporters, cybersecurity experts warn of possible attacks as hackers thrive on chaos. They also express concern that a very high pressure on margins could lead to reduced budgets for cybersecurity, weakening the protection of the networks.
“The evolving trade tariff environment is creating unintended ripple effects across industries. As businesses look to optimise costs, critical functions like cybersecurity may face budget pressures,” Dipesh Kaura, Country Director – India & SAARC, has said.
“At the same time, the digital threat landscape is growing more complex, with increased risks from both State-sponsored actors and opportunistic individuals exploiting economic uncertainty through scams and cyberattacks,” he said.
Asking the enterprises to stay vigilant, he said scalable, flexible cybersecurity solutions integrate with existing systems to help mitigate risks without heavy upfront investments.
“Rapid detection and response capabilities are especially critical for sectors like banking and healthcare, where protecting sensitive data is paramount,” he said.
The manufacturing sector, navigating operational challenges due to tariffs, should also prioritise cybersecurity to safeguard against disruptions and intellectual property (IP) theft.
“Quick adoption of technologies to manage monitoring, detection and response in such scenarios can significantly reduce the impact of cyber incidents,” Kaura said.
Asked whether the company noticed any unusual activity in this context, he said it was too early for a scam to happen on this topic. “However, there is a definite activity on the State-sponsored attacks — but that won’t come on social media and news,” he said.
Samir K. Mody, Vice-President (Threat Research) at K7Computing, said that the chaos around trade tariffs could be only used for cheap social engineering-type attacks. “We saw things like that during Covid, which affected everyone,” he said.
“The tariff-related meltdown won’t actually affect all and sundry, but only investors,” he observed.
Steve Vintz, Co-CEO and CFO of Tenable, an exposure management solutions company, warns that President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs could unintentionally raise the risk of cyberattacks as adversaries look to retaliate against growing economic pressure.
“There is a strong correlation between economic sanctions, trade barriers and a rise in cyber threats, particularly targeting critical infrastructure,” he pointed out.
“Fundamental shifts in market dynamics such as evolving trade policies and the emergence of new technology paradigms like generative AI can lead to an increasingly opportunistic threat landscape,” he felt.
He pointed out a clear pattern – when there’s disruption in financial markets or economic uncertainty, bad actors thrive.
Businesses need to move faster than the threat actors they face. Now, more than ever, organisations have to be vigilant in bolstering their cybersecurity defences to mitigate the heightened risk of cyberattacks.
Venkateshwarlu Madala, Founder and CEO of cybersecurity startup Ciberts, said hackers could launch market-driven DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, exploiting the financial chaos. “Non-State actors are increasingly aligning cyberattacks with market dynamics to maximize disruption. They launch DDoS attacks during high-volume trading periods (e.g., market open/close), where abnormal traffic blends with legitimate activity,” he said.
He wanted the organisations to deploy autonomous threat detection systems that analyse traffic patterns and to preempt attacks.
Published on April 13, 2025
