The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has been allocated a sum of Rs 625 crores to improve the country's cybersecurity infrastructure. Out of the total, 400 crores has been allocated to Cyber Security projects and Rs 225 crores cybersecurity response team Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).
The year 2022 was notably bad for India in terms of cybersecurity. The country faced some of the worst cyber attacks in its history, starting with the one at AIIMS Delhi in late November. Five of the servers at the institution were attacked allegedly by Chinese hackers.
Post these, a series of attacks were discovered mostly in healthcare institutes, including Safdarjung hospital in Delhi.
Another major incident saw the data of 30 million Indian Railways users being leaked and put up on the dark web for sale. The data is believed to have leaked from RailYatri’s website, which people use to book train tickets. And while these were some of the attacks, these were just some that came to light.
According to a survey published by Indusface, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) security company backed by Tata Capital, India is now one of the nations that is frequently targeted and penetrated. Nearly 59 percent of the 829 million cyber attacks that the company discovered and stopped globally in the fourth quarter of 2022 were targeted at India.
As more and more organisations — private, public and even government — move towards the cloud for business, it is important that they invest a great deal in cybersecurity to keep themselves and their employees safe.
PwC, in its latest annual global CEO survey, suggested that business leaders must stay ahead of cyber challenges by having a dedicated leadership group that understands the significance of cyber security and treats it as a priority, which also holds true for country leaders.
The fund allocated this year is a testament to how dire the need for cyber security is in the country and that Indian leaders are not taking the matter lightly.
First Published: Feb 1, 2023 4:24 PM IST
