Mumbai: The Data Security Council of India (DSCI) today launched ‘Be Cyber Street Smart’, its nationwide cyber security awareness campaign for Cyber Security Awareness Month 2026. The month-long campaign was formally launched at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) by Shri Ashish Shelar, Hon’ble Minister for Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra in the presence of senior leaders from BSE, SEBI, Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) and the Maharashtra Cyber department.
October is globally observed as Cyber Security Awareness Month (CSAM). To mark the launch, the dignitaries drew on the time-honored ‘Ring the Bell’ tradition at the BSE, ringing the bell as a shared commitment by government and industry to a safer cyberspace. The ceremony also featured the launch of the campaign’s Cyber Anthem.
The campaign is supported by government bodies including CERT-In, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Maharashtra Government, and by industry partners 63SATS, Axis Bank, Chitkara University, CRED, HDFC Bank, IIFL Finance, Lloyds Technology Centre, PayPal, Protectt.ai, Punjab National Bank, QRC Assurance, QuilrAI, SQ1 Security, Target, Thales, Veeam and ZS Associates, along with BSE and BSECCL.
The 2026 campaign reimagines Kathputli, India’s traditional string-puppet storytelling art, for the digital age. Just as Kathputlis have long carried folk wisdom from one generation to the next, ‘Be Cyber Street Smart’ uses familiar, culturally rooted storytelling to make cyber safety easy to understand, remember and share.
Through October, the campaign will help citizens build safe habits across mobile app safety, email security, social media safety and digital payments. It addresses the fraud typologies affecting Indians most directly today, including malicious APK frauds, AI voice-cloning emergency scams, real-time deepfakes, new-age “digital arrest” scams, AI-powered fraud and other emerging threats.
Campaign content will reach citizens through a suite of easy-to-share awareness formats, each drawing on a familiar Indian idiom such as Screensavers Manch, Poster Chaupal, Scams decoded through infographics, Cyber Kathas, stickers, Cyber Pathshala ki Kitaab and more.
All awareness material and artefacts will be available at: https://www.dsci.in/cyber-security-awareness-month-2026/
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