1. Home
2. Blogs

India’s Current Take on Cyber Security

• 
• 
• 
• 0
• 0

We have been witnesses to several cyberattacks in several circumstances, multiple times. Cyber insurance might prove to be effective protection under such circumstances. Telangana and Andhra power utilities experienced a ransomware attack, a few years back. A giant PC manufacturer admitted that their internal system has been hacked, breaching confidential customer information. The leakage of Covid-19 test reports also occurred and so did the data breach of an airline company, leading to the exposure of confidential information of nearly 4.5 million passengers. Such incidents are no isolated occurrences and have significantly increased over the last two years, during the pandemic. This is more so because the worldwide lockdown situation compelled us to resort to online services for most of our dealings.

Such digital dependence has led to enhanced exposure to the digital platform. Not only for work, but we have also resorted to digital techniques for communication, and entertainment, for most the individuals and most the business enterprises, big or small, have significantly enhanced the usage of tabs, mobiles, computers, and other e-devices. The majority of our transactions and dealings have transformed into online mode.

According to a study conducted by the US cyber tech organisation, CrowdStrike, it takes nearly seven days on average to understand and acknowledge a cyber security breach and then respond accordingly. However, in India, this time period is around nine days. Such statistics push the position of the country down to the bottom of the list of effective dealing with cyber security breaches, threats, and attacks.

Losses and gains

The lack of proper cyber security measures has initially led to significant losses for some enterprises because of occasional cyber attacks, like ransom ware or malware attacks. However, this led to a considerable boost in the cyber security industry.

In 2021, international companies, with their operations in this country, generated revenue of $11 billion from the cyber security sector. It includes $1.02 billion from nearly 230 odd numbers of start-ups along with the Global Capability Centres, with a revenue base growth rate of 27% CAGR, as per the statistics of DSCI. The Indian and most India-based companies are soaring high on the global platform, because of the availability of extensive engineering talent.

Factors responsible for the boost of cyber security threats in India

India is currently one of the most rapidly growing markets for evolving digital technologies, fuelling the implementation of the government’s mission of Digital India. In order to actualise the scheme, the government has pushed us towards adopting several e-services like DigiLocker and Jan Dhan Yojana.

1. Vulnerability:

Currently, India has more than 1.5 billion phones and nearly one crore internet users, creating an enormous pool of digitally assailable targets. The pandemic outbreak has aggravated the problem even further, because of heavier digital dependence. From work-from-home to e-shopping and miscellaneous transactions, the pandemic compelled us to enhance the adoption of multiple interconnected devices along with various work networks. Consequently, such quick and enormous expansion of so many digital assets has caused effective enhancement of potential cyber-attack coverage areas through malicious adversaries.

2. Nature:

Cyber threats are of a wide variety, and some of the most notable ones include:

a. viruses, malware, spyware, Trojans

b. Backdoors, allowing mote access

c. Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS, flooding networks and servers making them unusable

d. Domain Named System, poisoning the attacks, compromising the DNS and redirecting the concerned website to other malicious sites

3. Difficulties in the implementation of a united cyber security policy:

One of the toughest challenges for the policymakers in navigating is that the cyber security laws include multiple moving components. Whether the difficulty lies in the software or the hardware, the origin of the concerned software being foreign r whether the terabytes of the data concerned are parked on varying servers placed outside the geographical boundaries of India, the lawmakers face multiple obstacles, while making cohesive cyber security policies.

The rapid and enhanced rushing towards digitisation, in almost every probable sector, has resulted in augmented collaborations with several application service dealers and providers. The main target behind this is to let the customers enjoy the best possible services and app facilities in the quickest possible way. However, it often lacks due diligence.

Moreover, most of the laws required to properly design the system belong to the private sector, rather than the central legal system. This further handicaps the authorities and lawmakers for perfect and satisfactory implementation of coherent legal policies, securing the digital environment.

4. Growth:

The frequent cyberattacks during the pandemic period have resulted in a significant boom in cyber security growth. As per the statistics of December 2020, India’s cyber security industry was worth $10.82 billion, rapidly growing at a pace of 27% CAGR, with almost 230 Indian start-ups actively contributing towards this boost This particular sector holds enormous and magnificent potential to generate expertise for India in countless sectors, jobs, revenue, handholding start-ups, if they effectively lobby with the Indian government, ensuring favourable regulative state of affairs for effective growth of the cyber security industry of India.

5. Paving the way:

While the Indian Cyber Security strategy is currently a work-in-progress, we are in immediate need of certain special non-negotiable terms and conditions for an effective and synchronized approach towards launching effective cybercrime fights in the country. Firstly, we require one nodal agency for enforcing restrictive and strong laws and penalising the associated entities, as and when they fail to implement effective cyber security investments, similar to RBI regulations are implemented on banks and financial institutions.

We require a strong synchronization and conglomeration of all the independent taskforces with the governmental framework, both at the national and state levels. Moreover, we are in dire need of a central cybercrime cell, leveraging the resources for effective breaches ad threats.

All the business companies and enterprises must effectively bear the responsibility to establish strong defences against cybercrime acts.

Conclusion

Currently, our country is standing at a crucial juncture, and immediately we have to establish an integrated cyber security system based on the government agenda, and improvise it, as per requirement. This will also further boost and development of the cyber insurance sector too, resulting in a tenacious growth of India’s cyber security genre.

Disclaimer: The above information is for illustrative purpose only. For more details, please refer to policy wordings and prospectus before concluding the sales.

RELATED ARTICLES

Telecom Industry and Its Tryst with Cybersecurity

Cyber Insurance: All You Need to Know

Your Quick Guide to Cyber terrorism on Anti-Terrorism Day

---

• 
• 
• 
•