Cybercrime rises 500% amid pandemic spread

The alarming pandemic situation has also led to rise of cybercrime in India by 500 per cent. Also, India is one of the top-three attacked countries in the world as far as cyber-attacks are concerned. This was revealed by Lt Gen (Dr) Rajesh Pant, National Cybersecurity Coordinator, Prime Minister's Office, Government of India.

There are emerging threats from the proliferation of new technologies like drones and IoT devices. To ensure a safe, secure and trusted cyberspace, the government has taken a series of initiatives, he said.

The government is expected to release a new cybersecurity strategy sometime later this year, Pant said at an event which was held by Public Affairs Forum of India. He added that the strategy would holistically cover the entire ecosystem of cyber space in India.

"The vision of this strategy is to ensure safe, secure, resilient, vibrant, and trusted cyber space," he said. The new strategy would serve as a guideline to tackle every aspect, whether it is governance or data as a national resource, or building indigenous capabilities or cyber audit, to name a few. "There are about 80 odd deliverables coming out of this new strategy," he added.

The theme of the PAFI Dialogue was 'Cyber Security in the New Normal.'

"Cybercrime is increasing. Attribution is the difficult part and now (cyber criminals) they have started taking advantage of dark web. Pandemic gave the perfect storm to the cyber criminalised", he said. At present, India is having bilateral cyber security agreement with 15 countries.

Highlighting the Prime Minister's focus on the importance of cyber security, Lt Gen said that "the Government has a good framework in place. From 2013 to 2021, the threat surface has changed. Pandemic and work-from-home has exponentially expanded the threat surface. Cyber security, from the Government of India perspective, has become an essential service... Government is also looking at revising the IT Act, besides the new cyber strategy that is being worked upon."

On the national security narrative of the telecom sector Pant said, "while other nations have created a black-list of companies that can't operate in the country, India is the only nation to create a white-list of telecom companies that are allowed to operate in India. The companies allowed must be a trusted source. We were able to create and launch the trusted telecom portal during the pandemic and within six months."

It was in 2013 when the then government at the Centre had chalked out a strategy to appoint cyber security professionals and had set to have five lakh of such professionals by 2018. But nobody knows what happened to that policy. There are 660 million internet users and 1.1 billion smartphone users. National Informatics Centre (NIC), which used to handle three crore emails per day in the past, is now handling seven crore emails per day now.