Cybercrime is becoming an industry: Rajnath Singh

Acknowledging that cybercrime has become an "industry" with some even offering tools for committing crimes as "services", Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday said increasing cyber-dependency has increased the vulnerability of attacks against civilian and military infrastructures.

Singh also flagged concerns over online radicalisation and self-radicalisation, which have further added to the woes of law enforcement agencies, saying continuance of availability of such radicalised materials on the internet is likely to have a drastic change in society and subsequently to humanity.

Inaugurating a two-day International Police Conference on Cybercrime and Terrorism here, Singh said, "cybercrime has become an industry and many cyber crimes related tools and techniques are being offered as services. Even novice criminal with limited investments of money can afford to have such services at his disposal."

At the conference with the theme 'Challenges to Policing in 2020: How is Cyber Space Shaping our Approach to Cybercrime and Terrorism, How Do We Perform With it and Take Advantage of it', Singh said the increase in digitisation of the financial services with "inadequate attention to setting up of robust process, controls and monitoring mechanisms" has given "new-age fraudsters the opportunity to exploit these gaps" leading to new types of financial crimes.

He said computer-based technologies are being increasingly used in various activities ranging from the simple home security system to complex nuclear power plants or space programmes. "The cyber-dependency has become widespread today. This has increased the vulnerability of attacks against both civilian and military infrastructures," he said asking police and citizens to work together to tackle it.

While highlighting that police needed to be "more democratised," Singh referred to the still existing "trust deficit" between police and the common man and said, the level of trust is particularly "very low" amongst socially and economically weaker sections, minority groups, women, elderly and children.

Noting that network outages, data compromised by hackers and computer malware among others have affected the life, he said opportunities of exploitation has risen due to the rise in the number of computers, mobile users, digital applications and data-networks. "With the growing volume and sophistication of cyber attacks, each one of us is required to protect sensitive information, as well as safeguard national security," he added.