New Cybersecurity Strategy For India To Likely Release This Year
(This was originally posted in The Statesman)
The government is expected to release a new cybersecurity strategy this year, Lt Gen Rajesh Pant, the National Cybersecurity Coordinator at the Prime Minister’s Office said at an event. The coordinator, at an event organized by the Public Affairs Forum of India (PAFI), added that the strategy would holistically cover the entire ecosystem of cyberspace in India.
“The vision of this strategy is to ensure safe, secure, resilient, vibrant, and trusted cyberspace,” 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.’ “Pandemic has shot up the cyber-crimes in India by 500 per cent and India is one of the top 3 attacked countries in the world as far as cyber-attacks are concerned,” Pant said. 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. “Cybercrimes are increasing. Attribution is the difficult part and now (cybercriminals) have started taking advantage of the dark web. Pandemic gave the perfect storm to the cybercriminals,” he added.
