India, allies to combat cybercrime

New Delhi likely to come up with its own cyber security architecture

Even as Russia and China seek a new global legal framework to deal with cybercrimes, India is likely to work with the US and the UK , and a few other countries in Europe to scale up a 2004 treaty to boost international action against the menace. 

While New Delhi may come out with its own national cyber security architecture soon, it is also studying the Budapest Convention – the only existing international treaty that was adopted by the Council of Europe. Russia and China, however, have been campaigning for a new treaty to deal with cyber crimes. 

National Security Advisor (NSA) Shiv Shankar Menon on Wednesday said that the government was in the final stages of preparing the national cyber security architecture and would next month hold consultations with the NASSCOM— the apex body of the software and services companies in India. Menon was speaking in the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses here after releasing a report on ‘India’s Cyber Security Challenge’. 

Revealing that India’s Computer Emergency Response Team or CERT-IN helped foil about 8,000 cyber attacks in just a couple of weeks during the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi in 2010, Menon said: “We are making a beginning in putting in place a system of certification and responsibility for telecommunication equipment and are working on procedures and protocols, which will rationalise communication interception and monitoring.” 

He said that India needed “more than just a whole-of-government effort”, to fight the menace of cybercrimes. “It must include the entire scientific and technological strength of the country, whether in laboratories, universities or in our private sector firms.” Though India believes that an international legal framework should be developed to deal with cybercrimes, it has not yet signed the Budapest Convention. 

Sources, however, told Deccan Herald that though New Delhi was yet to take the final call on the Budapest Convention, it was in favour of scaling it up to turn it into an international legal framework to deal with computer and internet crimes. 

“There is already an existing international treaty and we can work on it to make it acceptable to all. But if we start negotiations on a new treaty now, it may take years to conclude it and make it operational,” said a source in New Delhi. “However, at present, India has all its options open.” 

India’s Information Technology Act was amended in 2008 to make it in sync with the basic principle and tenets of the Budapest Convention. 

Forty-seven countries so far have signed the Budapest Convention that came into force in 2004. Thirty-three of them ratified including the US, the UK and several other European nations.

Russia, who did not sign the treaty, has rather been proposing a United Nation convention on cybercrime. 

India has inked Memoranda of Understanding on cyber security cooperation with the US, Japan and South Korea. But Menon on Wednesday pointed out that most of the proposals for international cyber governance were “thinly masked efforts to control or shape the internet”, while some were “ideologically driven”. 

“Inter-governmental rules of the road are certainly desirable. No one can argue against them. But in my personal view, we must be clear that they will not have practical effect or be followed unless they are in the clear self-interest of those who should be following them,” said Menon.