Indian Government has taken a slew of measures
to tackle cyber attacks: IT Minister

With the proliferation of Information Technology (IT), the trend in increasing cyber-security violations in India is similar to that worldwide, Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in New Delhi.”The government has taken a slew of measures to tackle cyber-security violations and cybercrimes in the country,” Prasad said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

“A total number of 23, 254, 552, 1,237, 2,565, 8,266, 10,315, 13,301, 22,060, 71,780 and 96,383 security incidents including phishing, scanning, spam, malicious code, website intrusions etc. were reported to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) during the years 2004 to 2014 (till September), respectively.”

“During the years 2009 to 2014 (till September) a total no. of 11,831, 20,701, 21,699, 27,605, 28,481 and 14,151 Indian websites were also hacked by various hacker groups spread across worldwide,” he said.

“The government has also initiated Information Security Education and Awareness (ISEA) project with the aim to develop human resource in the area of Information Security at various levels. Phase-I of the programme has been completed,” Prasad informed the house.

He mentioned that all major websites are being monitored regularly to detect malicious activities.

“All central government ministries or departments and state or Union Territory governments have been advised to conduct security auditing of entire Information Technology infrastructure. All the new government websites and applications are to be audited with respect to cyber-security prior to their hosting,” the minister said.

CERT-In has empanelled a total number of 45 security auditors to carry out security audit of the IT infrastructure of government, public and private sector organisations.

Mentioning that close watch is kept to scan malicious activities on the important networks in the government, public and service providers, the minister said: “All the ministries/departments of central government and state governments have been asked to implement the crisis management plan to counter cyber-attacks and cyber-terrorism.”