Cyber Cell Performs Badly, only 75 Out of 570 Cases Solved

IIT Kanpur has shared a study with the Parliamentary finance committee, according to which demonetization and the following push for the digitization has increased risks related to the cybercrime, and India is required to urgently improve its defenses by creating cyber security commission, something similar to Atomic Energy and Space Commissions.

The study having noted the government's initiative of starting several programmes for enhancing the citizen's participation in completely digitalized economy, said that the cyber security centers created by Reserve Bank of India would not be sufficient. The study also said: "while RBI centres often come to IITs such as IIT-K for expert opinion, IITs do not engage in relevant research on cyber security."

Cybercrime in India also has doubled up from the year 2014 to 3 lakh in the year 2015. The number increases to 1.49 lakh in the year 2014 from 71,780 in the year 2013. Timesnownews.com posted on July 31st, 2017, quoting a report of WikiLeaks stating that attacks from the 'Equation group' assumed as a covert NSA and CIA program infected the telecom, military and research institutes of India.

Keeping in view of central govt.'s pushing on linkage of Aadhaar with financial dealings; the report emphasized that database of Aadhaar must remain secured against the unauthorised usage. Report further stated that few banks are conducting many transactions on Aadhaar numbers of their customers.

It has been observed that some banks were conducting hundreds of transactions on Aadhaar numbers of the unsuspecting citizens. Because of increase in digital transactions, driven by the e-wallets like PayTM, cyber attacks has compromised over 3 Mn debit cards and ATM via hacking of Hitachi-engineered ATM machine in 2016.

The cell unusually failed to attend 209 cases of missing mobile phones, of which only 16 cases could be actually closed till date. Only 21 complaints have been resolved out of 210 complaints. The slow speed of development in piling up complaints related to cyber crime indicates that concerned officials are ignorant.

The experts said that a broader net required to be cast by the banking system in India and the government should engage cyber security experts from top institutes as an advanced level of protection which was not there in most financial organisations.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/4/2017