India contemplating a new National Cyber Security Strategy
The transition to digitalized lives started with the advent of twenty-first century. This transition has sped up exponentially with each passing year. After two decades since its advent, security of the cyber space has become a crucial issue for human kind. Today we have capabilities to control everything through internet and computing devices like computer, mobiles and internet of things (IoTs). The World Wide Web is a public place. Apart from you, others (hackers) can also take control of your networks. These hackers can be individual miscreants as well as state sponsored hackers teams. To counter the threat, India is planning to come up with a new National Cyber Security Strategy.
New National Cyber Security Strategy
India, during and after the faceoff with China, has faced multiple state sponsored intrusions including cyber-attacks on which led to power outage in Mumbai, and a glitch in country’s National Stock Exchange (NSE) which is still being investigated.
Therefore, India is planning to come up with a new national cyber security strategy to improve the existing state of affairs. According to National Cyber Security coordinator, former Lieutenant General Rajesh pant in case of an attack, the plan will coordinate responses by multiple ministries and government offices including Ministry of Home Affairs, Defense, Information Technology and National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC). The cabinet committee on security, headed by the Prime Minister of India, will approve the strategy.
Pant also told Bloomberg that the investigation is ongoing for suspected intrusions in national critical infrastructure (Mumbai outage and glitch in National stock exchange) and the report is expected to be released in about a fortnight.
“In my view, if internet-connected computers are infected by malware, I won’t say it’s an attack but an infection unless it jumps from IT systems to other operation systems,” Pant said. “It’s like a crank caller. Can you stop someone from dialing your number?”
Countries boosting cyber capabilities
Boris Johnson in a recent statement said that “Cyber power is revolutionizing the way we live our lives and fight our wars, just as air power did 100 years ago,”. He also emphasized that Britain needs to boost its capacity to conduct cyber attacks on foreign enemies.
He basically meant that 100 years ago (during WW1 and WW2), aircrafts (air power) changed the war landscape. Similarly, the cyber power also has potential to disrupt the systems by causing economic losses and danger to human life. As a result of this, multiple nations including the United Kingdom and India are focusing and strengthening on their national Cyber Security programs.
India already has a Defence Cyber Agency, a tri-service command of the Indian Armed Forces, focusing on cyber warfare. However, India has remained tight lipped about the role of the agency till now. India also has an existing National Cyber Security Policy, 2013.
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