Government wakes up to cyber security

NEW DELHI: Realizing the risks and threats that are lurking in cyberspace, the Government is taking steps to provide an "effective and strong legal environment to ensure cyberspace security." Deputy national security advisor Vijay Nambiar stated this while speaking on behalf of national security advisor MK Narayanan, while inaugurating the Indo-US Cyber Security Forum Legal Seminar. The seminar is being organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS).






Nambiar said that apart from constructing a robust legal framework, India is working on various other facets of information security. He said that the Department of Information Technology had set up a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT -IN), which had acquired technical capabilities to become a trusted referral agency and thereby meet the needs of the Indian cyber community. "CERT-IN has developed capacities in incident response and provides a range of services including risk analysis, alerts and announcements, education and training," he added.





Nambiar further said that there is a need for greater strengthening, training and awareness on the part of all users of cyberspace, as India constructs a reliable and effective assurance framework covering the various dimensions of information security. "The training of judiciary in the complexities of cyber law had been undertaken on priority," he said and added that law enforcement agencies were trying to learn the intricacies of cyber investigations and cyber forensics.





Speaking on the occasion, US CERT chief security strategist Howard Schmidt observed that as nations become consistently the victims of physical attacks, they (nations) could not undermine the importance of their dependence on IT. He added that nations have to move forward in terms of cyber security, for which technology would be a key component. Howard also emphasized the need for education and awareness creation among nations and enforcement agencies and remarked that the need now was to take "user ID" and "passwords" to the next level of identity protection.





CII principal advisor Lt Gen SS Mehta (Retd) announced that CII was also in the process of putting cyber security warnings for the industry.