Nasscom, the IT industry’s apex body, issued an advisory to member companies on Monday, urging heightened vigilance and preparedness across business continuity and cybersecurity frameworks amid rising conflict in the Middle East. While business operations currently remain stable, organisations are proactively reviewing contingency plans and strengthening resilience measures to mitigate potential disruptions should the situation evolve over time.According to the Nasscom advisory, several companies are reviewing and activating contingency frameworks to ensure operational continuity and uninterrupted service delivery in the event of regional disruptions. Companies are prioritising employee wellbeing by enabling remote work arrangements and closely monitoring the situation for employees located in affected geographies. Firms are also evaluating alternate infrastructure routing to ensure cloud and data centre resilience and safeguard critical systems.Furthermore, companies are advising employees to limit non-essential travel through the region and explore alternative transit routes where required. Companies are proactively engaging with clients to communicate preparedness measures and ensure continuity of services.The advisory warned that periods of geopolitical uncertainty often see a rise in coordinated cyber threats, disinformation campaigns, and infrastructure targeting. To address this, companies are advised to strengthen their cybersecurity posture and prioritise the following:Rotate credentials organisation-wide and apply patches for critical Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs); Enforce multi-factor authentication on all external access paths (VPN, RDP, SSH, cloud admin) and implement conditional access controls to counter token-theft and adversary-in-the-middle attacks; Assess all third-party vendors with Middle Eastern exposure, as one compromised vendor can cascade into sector-wide disruption; Engage ISPs and cloud providers for DDoS scrubbing capacity; Maintain air-gapped backups for ICS/OT, core banking, and healthcare systems; Conduct employee awareness on social engineering attacks themed around possible war-like situations, government alerts with intent to cause harm.Nasscom continues to monitor the evolving situation in parts of the Middle East and remains in regular contact with Middle East Council to assess developments on the ground and extend support where required. The industry body is also coordinating with relevant authorities to assist member company employees in the region.