Increase in cyber attack incidents in the country: Govt

The increase in cyber attack incidents in the country have increased exponentially over the years, with 3.13 lakh incidents reported in 2019 (up to October) alone, while it was just 49,455 in 2015.

"As per the information reported and tracked by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a cyber security agency of the government, in 50362 (2016), 53117 (2017) 208456 (2018) incidents have reported," Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Sanjay Dhotre informed Rajya Sabha in written reply.

From April 2017 to March 2019, total 11,816 incidents of cyber attacks on ATMs of different banks have reported, said the Minister.

The cyber security incidents include spreading of virus/Botnets/spyware, attacks on servers, spoofing and phishing attacks, attacks on critical infrastructure, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and Wireless networks; attacks on applications such as E-Governance, E-Commerce, said the Minister.

"According to the logs analyzed and made available to CERT-In, the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the computers performing the attacks appear to belong to countries like Algeria, Brazil, China, France, Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, USA and Vietnam," said the Minister.

To check the repeat of attacks, the Government has formulated Crisis Management Plan for countering cyber attacks and cyber terrorism for implementation by all Ministries/ Departments of Central Government, State Governments and their organizations and critical sectors.

Cyber security mock drills are being conducted regularly to enable assessment of cyber security posture and preparedness of organisations in government and critical sectors.

The Centre has set up National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) to generate necessary situational awareness of existing and potential cyber security threats and enable timely information sharing for proactive, preventive and protective actions by individual entities. Phase-I of NCCC has been made operational, said the Minister.