India might lose the cyber space face-offs unless IT infrastructure of the military is indigenised soon. Analyse (200 words)
Refer – The Indian Express
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 6 years
KEY POINTS
Vulnerability of India
· India seems to be largely unaware of the vulnerabilities that exist in the critical networks due to foreign hardware and software.
· BSNL – Over 60% of software and hardware being used by BSNL is sourced from Chinese Huawei or ZTE. This is despite Huawei being probed for hacking a BSNL network in 2014.
· AFNET – Cisco (US network equipment maker) was a major supplier of equipment for The Air Force Network (AFNET) which was launched in 2010.
· The army’s latest communication backbone, Network for Spectrum (NFS), also uses Cisco equipment.
· Software – The Indian Army mostly uses the Microsoft Windows operating system on its official computers.
· Windows is an outstanding system but is a closed-source software owned by a company that is bound by US laws.
· It is historically tied to the American intelligence community.
· Past instances like, the U.S’s PRISM program and the recent incident like the insertion of China’s malicious chip in Super micro server motherboards bound for U.S, indicates the severity of emerging global cyber threats.
· Notably, India is a prime target for American spying as India stood at the 5th place in the overall list of countries targeted by PRISM.
Road to future
· Despite Indian products being available, a concerted effort to use indigenous solutions is conspicuously absent.
· But with clear dangers in cyber space, India needs to move towards making changes that are essential to protect national interests.
· A key task is for the Indian military to take the lead in indigenising its IT infrastructure.
Nandadeep 6 years
Please review.thanks
IAS Parliament 6 years
Approach is good. Second part of the answer could have been written better. Keep writing.
