The Government of India is expected to release a new cybersecurity strategy this year, Lt Gen Rajesh Pant, the National Cybersecurity Coordinator at the Prime Minister’s Office at an event organised by the Public Affairs Forum of India (PAFI)
He further 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 cyber space,” Pant said.
He said that the new strategy would serve as a guideline to tackle various aspects, be it data as a national resource, building indigenous capabilities or cyber audit.
“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.’
Pant added that the pandemic has increased cyber-crimes in India by 500 percent and India is one of the top 3 attacked countries in the world as far as cyber-attacks are concerned. There are emerging threats from the proliferation of new technologies like drones and IoT devices.
“Cybercrimes are increasing. Attribution is the difficult part and now cyber criminals have started taking advantage of the dark web. Pandemic gave the perfect storm to the cyber criminals,” he said.
Pandemic and work-from-home has exponentially expanded the threat surface. Cybersecurity, from the Government of India’s perspective, has become an essential service. The government is also looking at revising the IT Act, besides the new cyber strategy that is being worked upon,” he added.
