Central Government launches online portal to prevent, spread awareness on cybersecurity

It is apparent from a press statement that the Central Government has taken steps to spread awareness about cybercrimes, issue of alerts/advisories, capacity building/training of law enforcement personnel/ prosecutors/ judicial officers, improving cyber forensics facilities etc. to prevent such crimes and to speed up the investigation.

The Minister of State for Home Affairs, G Kishan Reddy, in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, had explained this yesterday.

The Government has launched the online cybercrime reporting portal, www.cybercrime.gov.in to enable complainants to report complaints pertaining to Child Pornography/Child Sexual Abuse Material, rape/gang rape imageries or sexually explicit content. The Central Government has rolled out a scheme for the establishment of Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) to handle issues related to cybercrime in the country in a comprehensive and coordinated manner.

‘Police’ and ‘Public Order’ are State subjects as per the Constitution of India. States/UTs are primarily responsible for prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of crimes through their law enforcement machinery. The Law Enforcement Agencies take legal action as per provisions of law against cybercrime offenders.

Further, the Government has taken several steps to prevent and mitigate cybersecurity incidents. These include:

(i) Establishment of National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) for protection of critical information infrastructure in the country.

(ii) All organizations providing digital services have been mandated to report cybersecurity incidents to CERT-In expeditiously.

(iii) Cyber Swachhta Kendra (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre) has been launched for providing detection of malicious programmes and free tools to remove such programmes.

(iv) Issue of alerts and advisories regarding cyber threats and counter-measures by CERT-In.

(v) Issue of guidelines for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) regarding their key roles and responsibilities for securing applications/infrastructure and compliance.

(vi) Provision for an audit of the government websites and applications prior to their hosting, and thereafter at regular intervals.

(vii) Empanelment of security auditing organisations to support and audit the implementation of Information Security Best Practices.

(viii) Formulation of the Crisis Management Plan for countering cyber attacks and cyber-terrorism.

(ix) Conducting cybersecurity mock drills and exercises regularly to enable assessment of cybersecurity posture and preparedness of organizations in Government and critical sectors.

(x) Conducting regular training programmes for network/system administrators and Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) of Government and critical sector organisations regarding securing the IT infrastructure and mitigating cyber attacks.