National Cyber Security Policy roadmap launched

The government has launched National Cyber Security Policy which outlines a road-map to create a framework for comprehensive, collaborative and collective response to deal with the issue of cyber security at all levels within the country.

The policy aims at facilitating creation of secure computing environment and enabling adequate trust and confidence in electronic transactions and also guiding stakeholders actions for protection of cyber space.

The objectives and strategies outlined in the National Cyber Security Policy together serve as a means to: articulate concerns, understanding, priorities for action as well as directed efforts; Provide confidence and reasonable assurance to all stakeholders in the country and global community, about the safety, resiliency and security of cyber space; and Adopt a suitable posturing that can signal our resolve to make determined efforts to effectively monitor, deter & deal with cyber crime and cyber attacks.

Kapil Sibal, union minister for communications and IT released the National Cyber Security Policy.

Speaking on the occasion, he underlined that this policy should be seen as protecting information-- personal, financial/banking, and sovereign data.

Sibal said "Information empowers, and in order to empower people with information, we need to secure the information/data and flagged the need to distinguish between data which can freely flow and data which needs to be protected."

He also stated that the government, through incentives and subsidies will need to support small and medium enterprises for accessing technology to make their systems safe and called on businesses to set aside finances for keeping themselves safe in cyber space.

Speaking on the occasion, minister of state for communications and IT, Milind Deora congratulated all stakeholders who worked towards the formulation of the policy and underlined that this policy will help protect our sovereign assets.

The salient features of the policy include: Vision and mission statement aimed at building a secure and resilience cyber space for citizens, businesses and Government;
Enabling goals aimed at reducing national vulnerability to cyber attacks, preventing cyber attacks & cyber crimes, minimising response & recover time and effective cyber crime investigation and prosecution; and Focused actions at the level of government, public-private partnership arrangements, cyber security related technology actions, protection of critical information infrastructure and national alerts and advice mechanism, awareness & capacity building and promoting information sharing and cooperation.

The policy also includes framework and initiatives that can be pursued at the government level, sectoral levels as well as in public private partnership mode; and Facilitating monitoring key trends at the national level such as trends in cyber security compliance, cyber attacks, cyber crime and cyber infrastructure growth.