Internal Security

There is a need for customised cyber security policy for each ministry and department. Comment.

Answer

Cyber security

• Cyber security is the body of technologies, processes and practices designed to protect networks, computers, programs and data from attack, damage or unauthorized access.
• The protection of information infrastructure and preservation of the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information in cyberspace is the essence of a secure cyber space.

Recent cyber threats faced by India

• 75% of Indian companies faced cyber-attacks from 2015-2017.
• There has been an exponential rise in Ransomware cases in the last one year.
• There are increasing number of data thefts among the civilians.
• The recent attack was in July this year ,created cyber security threats to major Indian companies RJio, Airtel and NSE

Departments specific needs

Telecom

• India surpassed the mobile usage of USA and more people are turning towards the usage of smart phones.
• There is no dedicated Data protection regulations among the telecom network
• Recent incident Proves the Fact:
• Airtel: The Radio Access Network went down for more than an hour in and around Delhi.
• There was a network outage in Delhi/NCR and one of the network nodes had been corrupted.
• RJio: Personal data such as Aadhaar details of the telecom users has been published in a website.
• Most of the telecom devices used in Indian sectors were from china and there are lot of threats to data protection.

Business Market

• Most of the business and service providers of government are also turning towards digital economy
• Recent incident shows that cyber security in business sector requires a customised security
• NSE: There has been three hour trading halt in the National stock exchange
• The halt has an estimated trade loss of about 7000 crores.

Banking Sector

• After demonetisation India is shifting to digital economy, so that there is increased use of Mobile technologies for Banking and other transaction related tasks.
• In 2016, security codes of around 32 lakh debit cards were breached.
• Several users reported unauthorised transactions from locations in China.

Defence database

• There are series of events reported that many important defence related data files has been published in various sources
• Leakage of information on operating instructions of underwater warfare system of the six Scorpène-class submarines, which were being built in India by French firm DCNS was found in an Australian website.
• Unlike nuclear energy, a neat division between civilian and military use of cyberspace is difficult.
• There is a serious need for dedicated cyber security regulation in defence department.

Governance

• The government is planning to transfer the benefits of subsidies to the civilians and farmers through Aadhaar linked bank accounts but there are huge extent of vulnerabilities found in this area of digital transactions
• Recent demonstration of opposite parties in Delhi assembly proves that EVM’s can be hacked easily from any part of the nation, though the government proved it’s a hoax, but the fact of vulnerable system cannot be completely denied.

Current status of cyber security in India:

• Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) created the position of the National Cyber Security Coordinator in 2014.
• There is a plan for creating National Cyber Security Agency (NCSA)

Few Agencies currently performing cyber operations are:

1. National Technical Research Organisation,
2. National Intelligence Grid,
3. National Information Board,
4. Computer Emergency Response Team -CERT

• India’s intelligence agencies should separately provide their consolidated inputs to aid the operations of the NCSA.

Ministries which already has few dedicated setups are

1. The Ministries of Defence,
2. Home, External Affairs
3. Information Technology  

• These ministries should be part of a policy wing that provides their assessments of local and regional developments.

• India should not hesitate to build its offensive cyber capabilities by developing cyber weapons.
• India’s cyber command should be the primary agency responsible for the creation and deployment of such weapons.