Representative Image for cyber-crime.
Credit: iStock Photo
Bengaluru: It is the need of the hour to ensure every police personnel is qualified to handle cases of cyber crimes, said Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara on Saturday.
He was speaking at the second edition of the Cybercrime Investigation Summit “CIDECODE-2025”, organised by the Centre for Cybercrime Investigation Training and Research (CCITR), in collaboration with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Karnataka, Infosys Foundation and Data Security Council of India(DSCI).
“When India moved into the digital world, we realised that a security challenge would be thrown at us. Though the digital world brought with it many opportunities, ensuring the security challenge was a permanent one,” he said, adding that cyber crimes, unlike other crimes, have no geographical boundaries.
He said, Karnataka is the first state in India to constitute a cyber security training institute in collaboration with the CID. “It has not only helped us train police personnel but also judiciary, prosecutors alongside academics,” he added.
Since its inception in 2019, CCITR has trained over 46,000 personnel from police, judiciary, prosecution, and other sectors in handling cybercrime.
Shedding light on growing cyber crimes, Alok Mohan, Director General and Inspector General of Police noted that in some divisions of Bengaluru, over 40 per cent of registered crimes are related to cyber security.
Speaking about current trends in Karnataka, he said, over 60,000 cyber crimes were registered in the last four years. “We expected that last year at least 10% of the total crimes in Karnataka would be cyber crimes. But to our surprise, it has hit 35% and even 40% in some divisions of Bengaluru,” he said.
“However, we must also acknowledge that police officers are not trained to handle the complexities of the digital world,” he added.
The Home Minister also felicitated students who won in the hackathon, where they developed innovative technical solutions to combat cyber threats like deepfake, leveraging blockchain for evidence integrity and a separate cyber law “Ideathon,” which focused on brainstorming legal frameworks and policy ideas to strengthen cybercrime prosecution.
The summit had a masterclass related to cybercrime and law, the future of deepfake and ransomware attacks on government portals by experts.