The exploded adoption of internet and mobile internet has also attracted new challenges for authorities. The total number of cybersecurity incidents in India has reportedly increased at a worrisome rate. According to the latest data released by the Indian Computer Emergency response Team (CERT-In) a total of 3.94 lakh cybersecurity incidents were recorded in 2019, up by 90% as compared to the previous year.
In the last two years, the number of Cybersecurity incidents in India has increased significantly. In 2015 only 49,455 incidents of Cybersecurity were reported, the figure has increased by nearly 700% in just 4 years.
Cyberspace is a complex environment of people, software, hardware and service on the internet. Due to vulnerability in software, lack of awareness among people and evolving processes, there are possibilities of increased Cybersecurity incidents in India,” says Sanjay Dhotre, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, while disclosing these figures in Lok Sabha.
Dhatre didn’t reveal any further information about the cyber attacks in India during 2019. Last year, Bangalore was the most favourite target of cybercriminals as the city recorded over 5,000 cases related to cyber frauds in the lone cyber crime police station. It is expected that the trend has continued in 2019 as well considering the number of digital transactions and mobile transactions is much higher than any other city in India.
While Dhatre urged the infrastructure providers and ecosystem players to have adequate security measures to block the cyber attacks, he has also assured that the government is equally serious about the cyberattacks in India. Audit of government websites and applications, formulation of a crisis management plan for countering cyber attacks and the launch of botnet cleaning and malware analysis centre “Cyber Swachhta Kendra” are few of of the measures taken by the government.
Such measures have helped the government to crack down on cyber attacks in India during 2019. Consequently, the number of hacked websites of central ministries, departments and state governments came down to half, from 110 in 2018 to 54 in 2019.
So, what are the reasons behind the increasing cyberattacks despite all the measures taken by companies and the government? A survey conducted by Netrika Consulting highlights that the lack of a robust IT security system in organisations is the real cause of concern. The study found that only 18 per cent of organisations have dedicated IT staff. However, 21 per cent of the company does not have dedicated employees.
