Security Issues
In News: Lok Sabha was told there have been 674,021 cyber attacks in the country this year until June (2022) — almost 3,700 cyber attacks a day, making India the third most impacted by network attacks in the world.
- From Covid vaccine research centres to banking and financial entities to PSU major Oil India Limited — a range of institutions came under cyber attack during the two years of the pandemic.
- The April 2022 attack on Oil India in Assam was one of the “most serious” incidents of ransomware attacks. “There were over 200 computers of Oil India that got encrypted during the attack and operations of Oil India came to a halt for almost a week.
- Health and banking were among the sectors hit hardest.
- While these attacks were successfully thwarted, these have underlined the need for constant vigil and global cooperation.
Present Government Initiatives for Cyber Security
Cyber Surakshit Bharat Initiative
- It was launched in 2018 with an aim to spread awareness about cybercrime and building capacity for safety measures for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and frontline IT staff across all government departments.
Cyber Swachhta Kendra
- The Cyber Swachhta Kendra (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre) is a part of the Government of India’s Digital India initiative under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
- It intends to create a secure cyberspace by detecting botnet infections in India and to notify, enable cleaning and securing systems of end users so as to prevent further infections.
Online cybercrime reporting portal
- Launched in 2019, it is a citizen-centric initiative enabling citizens to report cybercrimes online.
- The portal specifically focuses on crimes against women, children, particularly child pornography, child sex abuse material, online content pertaining to rapes/gang rapes, etc.
- It also focuses on crimes like financial crime and social media related crimes like stalking, cyberbullying, etc.
Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C).
- The scheme to set up I4C was approved in October 2018, to deal with all types of cybercrimes in a comprehensive and coordinated manner.
National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC).
- National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) is an organisation of the Government of India created under the Information Technology Act, 2000.
- The Information Technology Act, 2000 defines Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) as those computer resource, the incapacitation or destruction of which, shall have debilitating impact on national security, economy, public health or safety.
Source: Indian Express
