Growing Threat of Cyber Warfare

What is the issue? 

• Cyber-space has emerged as a potential arena for international confrontations. 
• Countries like China are already working on expanding their cyber capabilities and India too much start enhancing its cyber-defence capabilities.

How serious is cyber threat?

• The U.S. Defence Science Board, in a recent report had cautioned that the U.S. cyber defence capabilities were not up to the mark.  
• It additionally noted that the next decade is bound to witness massive additional deployment of cyber offence capabilities by many nations.
• As these observations are coming from one of the most potent countries in cyber space currently, the enormity of the challenge is only implicit.
• Significantly, India is consciously and speedily making a serious foray into digital space.
• India's vulnerabilities are only bound to grow exponentially.
• A 2017 study found that India ranked 4^th in online security breaches.
• India also accounted for over 5% of global threat detections.

What are the various cyber threats?

• Cyber threats can manifest in many ways.
• The most visible are cyber crimes, cyber theft, cyber espionage, cyber intrusions etc.
• These are relatively low-end threats.
• Criminal hackers can certainly cause data breaches and even financial loss.
• Countering such large scale threats is important.
• The real danger lies in targeted cyber attacks coming from adversarial nation states that carry out strategically planned and sophisticated cyber attacks.
• “Stuxnet Attack”, which damaged the Iranian nuclear centrifuge facility, is thought to be a cooridated operation of the governments of U.S. and Israel.
• Cyber tools are slowly becoming a regular part of the arsenal of nations.
• Hence, it is essentail to be aware of future cyber-wars and take precauitionary measures.

What is required?

• The three main components of any national strategy to counter cyber threats are defence, deterrence and exploitation.
• Defence - For the defence of critical cyber infrastructure,  National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) was established.
• While this is a positive, it now needs to partner individual ministries and private companies.
• It should put procedures in place to honestly report breaches.
• However, there are limits to defensive strategies in the cyber domain as the field is highly condusive for offensive capabilities.
• Therefore, cyber deterrence and exploitation have become important, although they are complex and not completely understood now.

What are the challenges?

• Nuclear deterrence works because there is clarity on the destructive potential.
• But this is not the case with cyber warfare.
• Notably, cyber capabilities of an adversary is not all that apparent.
• This is because unlike nuclear arsenal, there are no missiles to be counted.
• Besides these, identifying the time of the start of the attack and tracking the origins of the attack are also complex tasks.
• For these reasons, deterrence in cyber domain cannot operate in isolation.
• It thus needs the support of economic and diplomatic domains as well.  

What are the structures that need to be created?

• Militaristic View - The most serious cyber attacks are when an external state threatens the national security of India by exploiting the cyberspace.
• The danger cannot be countered by an intelligence agency like the NTRO or a research organisation like the DRDO.
• The lead agency to deal with this will have to be the defence services.
• This has to gather intelligence, evaluate targets and prepare cyber attack plans.
• Also, cyber operations cannot be a standalone activity.
• It has to be integrated with land, sea and air operations, as a part of information warfare.
• Defence Cyber Agency - India is one of the few countries which still do not have a dedicated cyber Command in its military.
• While the setting up of a Defence Cyber Agency has been announced, the effort looks lacklustre and half hearted.
• It is important for a dedicated cyber agency to have significant autonomy.
• It should have an expanded mandate on its own to erect a strong cyber arsenal.

Source: Indian Express

Quick Facts

National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO)

• NTRO was set up in 2004.
• It is a technical intelligence agency under the National Security Advisor (NSA).
• It falls directly under the Prime Minister's Office.
• It also includes National Institute of Cryptology Research and Development (NICRD) within its ambit.
• It works for developing technological capabilities in various fields.
• It acts as a super-feeder agency for providing technical intelligence to other intelligence agencies on internal and external security.