Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre
Union ministry of home affairs is planning to set up Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre in Delhi to strengthen its mechanisms in effectively dealing with cyber security attacks.
Together with Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre at Delhi, the union home ministry has also asked the state to establish a similar coordination centres at state level together with centres at district level. Thus, providing for a well-structured and an integrated mechanism to effectively deal with menace of cyber security threats and online abuses.
In order to effectively train the workforce, the union home ministry has released funds for state government to set up laboratory-cum-training Centre for police officials in each State.
Why it is needed?
India is on the verge of witnessing digital revolution. Various initiatives of government like Aadhar, cashless economy, Digital India and e-governance requires a well secured cyberspace. With internet penetrating at a faster rate it is also posing various internal security challenges, the post truth phenomenon needs to be effectively countered to secure the unity and integrity of the country. Thus, there is a necessity of the well-coordinated and an integrated mechanism to fight the evil forces.
On the other side the corporate sector is key pillar of the Indian economy. The corporate sector is aggressively utilizing Information and communication technology for their operations and functioning. Therefore, a resilient, secured cyberspace is a pre-requisite for India’s development.
The increasing penetration of Internet also pose a challenge due to the poor digital literacy of the country. Many of the users are the victims of cyber-crime and cyber-attacks without being aware of it.
India has witnessed 1,44,496 cyber-security attacks between 2014-16. As per the records of National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) 5,693, 9,622 and 11,592 cyber-crime cases were registered during 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively. Thus, showing a rise of 69% during 2013 to 2014 and 20% increase during 2014 to 2015. This new Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre is expected to provide a secured and resilient cyberspace for the triad of government, citizen and business.
How the Centre would work?
The new Centre will be dealing with the incidents of cybercrimes, including financial irregularities, communal material and pornographic content.
The establishment of Centre’s at district level will also aid in dealing even with the vernacular contents effectively.
With close coordination with state units and further with district centres the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre would regularly monitor and even block those sites which violate Indian laws like child pornography, communal and racial material.
The Centre would also come up with the list of repeated offenders and share their information with other agencies for further course of action.
Various cyber threats Include
- Denial of service attack: The attack denies access to legitimate users. Example: ransomware attacks
- Logic Bomb: A form of sabotage in which a programmer inserts code that causes a destructive action.
- Passive wiretapping: Monitoring or recording of data while they are being transmitted between the legitimate users.
- Pharming: Deceiving the users into believing that they are communicating with legitimate website. It uses methods like redirecting a user to fraudulent or spoofed website.
- Phishing: Spamming or using the pop-up messages to deceive people to disclose sensitive information.
- Spoofing: Creating a fraudulent website to mimic actual, well known site run by other party.
- Spyware: Malware installed without user’s knowledge to track or transmit data to the third party.
- Trojan Horse: It misleads users of its true intent. It masks as a useful programme that user wish to execute.
- Malware: software which is specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to a computer system.
