In a bid to ensure that repeated cyber attacks do not jeopardise India’s security system, the National Security Council (NSC), at its meeting held last week, took stock of the situation and deliberated over possible safety measures to be placed.
Informing about the meeting, which was chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, official sources said the experts discussed the present level of preparedness to deal with cyber security issues and also a future plan of action to be put in place.
During the meeting, the NSC secretariat had also brought out a paper highlighting several outstanding issues like identification of critical information infrastructure, delineation of responsibilities, dissemination of early warning and incidence response, the sources informed.
The agenda for further research and development was also discussed during the meeting, which comes close on the heels of recent hacking of CBI’s website by a group called “Pakistani Cyber Army”. The attack had raised questions over the safety regulations of servers provided by National Informatics Centre (NIC), the organisation responsible for maintaining government servers.
A report titled “Shadows in the Cloud” by a Canadian thinktank comprising “Information Warfare Monitor” and “Shadows Server” earlier this year said there was evidence of a cyber espionage network that compromised government, business and academic computer systems in India, especially the office of the Dalai Lama.
According to a Canadian firm, which investigated the hacking of the Dalai Lama’s computer, as many as 12 NIC computers had been hit by the Chinese hackers.
The sources, moreover, confirmed that besides reports by well-established thinktanks, there were several notes drawing urgent attention of various key ministries about possible intrusion by hackers either based in China or Pakistan trying to infiltrate into the computers.