India faced cyber attacks from foreign countries during lockdown: Govt tells House panel
NEW DELHI: India faced increased attempts at cyber-attacks from foreign countries, especially China and Pakistan, during the coronavirus-induced lockdown period, the ministry of information technology and electronics has told the parliamentary standing committee on Information Technology.
The 24th report of the standing committee on IT, tabled in Lok Sabha by panel chairman Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday, said the ministry apprised the House panel that robust cyber security mechanism are imperative for the effective implementation of the Digital India programme.
It
also said that while they responded to the increased risks by deploying
additional security controls to monitor and block attack attempts from
these countries, government would need to “significantly augment” its
total budgetary support for research and development in the area of
cyber security in order to address the challenges of emerging areas of
cyber security.
“Additional resources were deployed in shifts to
meet these requirements round the clock. Security Audit initiated and
completed using trusted networks (VPN) and restricted required port
access was opened for Audit. Required Audit resources from NICHQ and
CoEAppSec centres were used for provisioning Code review and black box
testing audit activity,” the ministry told the panel.
It also
pointed to funding constraints, saying most of the existing research and
development funds get consumed in sustaining ongoing projects “leaving
thereby no funds for taking up projects to address the new Cyber
Security challenges.”
The ministry also listed out challenges it
faced during the pandemic, including providing endpoint security during
Work-from-Home.
“An increase was seen in Application layer attacks
during pandemic period. NIC and its employees had to continue to work in
the peak and post pandemic days. Another challenge for NIC was to
ensure that this was made possible in Safest way while omitting the
possibilities of any spread,” the government said.
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