Why in news? A ransomware gang, BlackCat, breached the parent company of Solar Industries Limited, one of the Ministry of Defence’s ammunition and explosives manufacturers, and extracted over 2 Terabyte of data.

Highlights:

• Ransomwares have emerged as the most predominant of malicious Cyberattacks and the perpetrators demand hefty payments for the release of withheld data.
• The lines between the physical and digital realms blurring rapidly, critical infrastructure, from transportation, power and banking systems, would become extremely vulnerable to the assaults from hostile state and non-state actors.
• Most organisations lack the tools to identify cyberattacks to prevent them.
• India also faces an acute scarcity of cybersecurity professionals.

Ex: India is projected to have a total workforce of around 3,00,000 people in this sector in contrast to the 1.2 million people in the United States

• Organisations in the private sector, and their participation remains limited in India’s cybersecurity structures
• With the introduction of 5G and the arrival of quantum computing, the potency of malicious software, and avenues for digital security breaches would only increase

What are the steps taken  by  Indian Government?

• CERT-In, India’s Cybersecurity agency, introduced a set of guidelines to include the mandatory obligation to report cyberattack incidents within hours of identifying them, and designating a points person with domain knowledge to interact with CERT-In.
• India’s draft Digital Personal Protection Bill 2022 proposes a penalty of up to 500 crore for data breaches.
• Recently, India’s armed forces created a Defence Cyber Agency (DCyA), capable of offensive and defensive manoeuvres.
• All Indian States have their own cyber command and control centres.
• A lot of research works are also going on in the National Cyber ​​Crime Forensic Laboratory and the National Forensic Science University in cybercrime forensic investigation.
• Cyber Swachhta Kendra (CSK), which helps detect botnet and trojan infections among internet users and notifies them regarding the infection.
• In multinational frameworks such as the Quad and the I2U2 (which India is a member of) there are efforts to enhance cooperation in cyber incident responses, technology collaboration, capacity building, and in the improvement of cyber resilience.
• India’s most important strategic partner for, Open-ended Working Group (OEWG), comprising the entire UN membership, established through a resolution by Russia and U.S’s on the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE), comprising 25 countries from all the major regions in UN .

G-20 and India

• (CERT-In) conducted G-20, Cyber Security Exercise and drill in hybrid mode (Physical and Virtual)
• The first meeting of the Digital Economy Working Group under India’s G20 Presidency witnessed Cyber security dominating the discourse of the session
• The G-20 summit this year in India, have participation by all the stakeholders driving the global levers of power, to bring together domestic and international engagement groups across the spectrum, and steer the direction of these consultations.
• India could make an effort to conceptualise a global framework of common minimum acceptance for cybersecurity.
• Cyber Security would be one of the most significant contributions made by any nation towards collective security in modern times.