Cyber Security get Revamped with Government Five Year Plan

Union government of India in its bid to meet the challenge of cyber attacks and security in the virtual world in month of December set in motion a five-year project to revamp the entire cyber security apparatus of critical sectors in the country.

In the past one year, India has suffered 13,000 cyber incidents.
National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) had taken the responsibility to coordinate cyber security operations for critical infrastructures across the country.

It is part of the step to first create awareness and ensure setting up of a robust security system in all critical government agencies at their own level. Once agencies set up their security infrastructure, it will be connected to NCIIPC.
NCIIPC had prepared a five-year plan to completely revamp and integrate the cyber security apparatus of all critical infrastructures such as power, transportation, water, telecommunication and defence.

The government has also defined clear mandates for NCIIPC and CERT-IN, which is also engaged in cyber security of national infrastructure.

Tasks that NCCIIPC is Going to Perform

• NCIIPC will only look after absolutely critical sectors that have high threat perception coupled with greater dependence on computer and information technology (CIT),while other sectors will be with CERTIN.
• These sectors (with NCIIPC) have been identified as energy (power,coal,oil and natural gas),transportation (railways and civil aviation),banking and finance, telecom, defence, space, law enforcement and security.
• NCIIPC also plans to set up a sectoral Computer Emergency Response Team (CERTs) that would be connected to it, and will install censors on all critical systems to provide real-time information to its command and control (C&C) center about any cyberattack to formulate a quick response.
• Under a newly defined mandate, NCIIPC will look after critical sectors with high dependency on computer and information technology (IT), while other sectors will be under India's CERT, CERT-IN.

India's critical infrastructure agencies are no stranger to cyber attacks. Just in month of December a hacker group leaked Indian telco BSNL's passwords and database, calling for the withdrawal of a controversial legislation which allegedly suppresses freedom of speech and expression.

 In April 2012 Chinese hackers allegedly planted a bug via flash drives on India's navy computers, which relayed sensitive data to China IP addresses.