E-Paper
PM Modi to review cybersecurity, enemy threat to India's critical infrastructure
Although India and US have joined hands to counter the cyber-threat challenge, the Chinese threat poses a clear and present danger to vital infrastructure.
Prefer HTon Google
With mounting cyber attacks and cyber breaches on India’s civilian and military infrastructure by arch-rivals in the neighbourhood, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to convene a high-level meeting to review cybersecurity and data protection to make the critical structure more resilient to hybrid warfare.
Aware of the increasing cyber-attacks, stringent steps have been taken in both North and South Blocks with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) taking full-scale precautions to ensure that there is no data theft through introduced malware or cyber-bugs. While the government is tight-lipped about the cyber-security, the situation is more critical than it is made out to be by the National Informatics Centre. The PMO has also introduced strong steps to ensure that video conferences chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi are not compromised by unauthorized entries or participants.
Although much of the Indian concerns come under classified domains, the Modi government is aware of the threat posed by arch-rivals and is working with friendly countries like the US and France to build potent firewalls to ward off attacks. The seriousness of the threat can be gauged from the fact that it was Singapore which apparently tipped India on Chinese cyber-attacks on Indian military installations during the Pakistani retaliation to Indian Air Force’s attack on terror camps in Balakot on February 26, 2019.
While the Indian military operates within an air bubble and the security agencies on stand-alone servers, the worry of the Modi government is how to totally firewall government e-mails, health, transport, finance, power, railways, and education critical infrastructure from cyber-intrusions of enemy countries. The Chinese attack on AIIMS Delhi servers was just an example of the many crippling attacks initiated from the northern neighbour.
After the US alerted the Quad partners to Chinese dormant malware—which can be activated on need basis—in Japan and Australian critical infrastructure, India has joined hands with Washington to not only share information about cyber threats and vulnerabilities but also to work together to investigate and respond to cyber incidents.
The India-US joint statement after PM Modi’s visit to US this month stated: “ PM Modi and President Biden reaffirmed their countries’ commitment to an open, secure, inclusive, safe, interoperable and reliable internet, and to continuing cooperation on a range of cyber-security issues, including preventing and to responding to cyber-threats, promoting cyber-security education and awareness and measures to build resilient cyber infrastructure.
On the military front, there are plans to expand the strength of cyber command, which is staffed with a limited number of officers as compared to either the US or China. The cyber command will have three centers—two in north and one in south—to not only defend India but also to counter the cyber challenge.
With Quad being a group of open and functional democracies, the four countries are also joining hands on the cyber-security front by sharing technologies and information to counter the threat from Middle-Kingdom and its client states and no limits allies.
