India needs a centralized repository of cybercriminals: ASSOCHAM-EY study

BENGALURU: A joint study by ASSOCHAM and Ernst & Young (EY) has suggested that there is a need to establish a dedicated national governing unit as a central agency for all state government cybercrime agencies in India to coordinate, integrate and share information related to cybercrime.

The study titled ‘Strategic national measures to combat cybercrimes: Perspective & Learnings for India’ indicates that such a central agency will be responsible for driving all initiatives related to cybercrime prevention like collaboration with private sector, training cybersecurity professionals and spreading awareness across the country.

The study points out that a centralized database of cybercriminals should be maintained to keep a check and discourage cybercriminals. The study suggested that there is a need to establish a centralized repository for cybersecurity standards, best practices and guidelines, which can be used by law enforcement agency for preventing and investigating cybercrime.

The ASSOCHAM-EY study has also recommended collaboration with International Cyber Security Protection Alliance, such as the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), National Crime Agency’s National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU) and the UK’s CEOP as it would help in adopting best practices by other countries for prevention of cybercrime and in increasing the capability, knowledge, training, skills, capacity and expertise of cybersecurity task forces in India, thereby reducing the harm caused to businesses, customers and citizens due to international cyber attacks.

Stressing on special recruitment of personnel to man cyber cells at every police station, the study has suggested to nurture and engage cybercrime professionals to be deployed across states with access to dedicated laboratories for analysis in each state, thereby making them part of police team investigating cybercrimes.

The study has further noted that much needs to be done to realize the objective of government’s cybersecurity strategy as various initiatives and roadmaps listed in the same fall short of addressing a broad set of issues and challenges vis-à-vis complexity of cybercrime.

Global practices from mature law enforcement organizations like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Interpol need to be leveraged and adopted as per their feasibility as part of the Indian cybercrime strategy, suggested the ASSOCHAM-EY study. A strategy stating the vision, objective and approach for cybercrime prevention needs to be documented and developed to address short-term and mid-term challenges, it added.