Lok Sabha Question No. 3070 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2018-03-14
Subject: Cyber Attacks
Ministry: ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Asked by: KIRIT PREMJIBHAI SOLANKI

Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state:

(a)    whether the Government has taken any step to control the rising trend of cyber attacks in the country;

- (a) if so, the details of the steps taken in this regard;
- (b) whether any study has been conducted to identify the cyber threats in the country; and
- (c) if so, the details thereof ?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE FOR  ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI K. J. ALPHONS)

(a) and  (b):  Government  has  taken  various  measures  for  preventing  cyber  attacks  and enhancing the cyber security of information technology infrastructure in the country. These, inter alia, include:

- i.  The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) issues alerts and advisories regarding latest  cyber  threats/vulnerabilities  and  countermeasures  to  protect  computers on  regular  basis.    Security  tips  have  been  published  to  enable  users  to  secure  their Desktops  and  mobile/smart  phones.  Tailored  alerts  are  sent  to  key  organisations  to enable them to detect and prevent cyber attacks.
- ii.    Government has established National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) as per the provisions of section 70A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 for protection of critical information infrastructure in the country. NCIIPC has been regularly advising the critical information infrastructure (CII) sector organisation to reduce vulnerabilities to all kinds of threats and attacks, by sharing threat intelligence, guidelines, best practices and frameworks for protection and guiding them with policies and protection strategies.    In  addition,  training  and  awareness  programs  are  regularly  conducted  to improve the cyber hygiene in CII organisations.
- iii.  Government has formulated Cyber Crisis Management Plan for countering cyber attacks and  cyber  terrorism  for  implementation  by  all  Ministries/  Departments  of  Central Government, State Governments and their organizations and critical sectors.
- iv.    Government  has  issued  general  guidelines  for  Chief  Information  Security  Officers (CISOs)  regarding  their  key  roles  and  responsibilities  for  securing  applications  / infrastructure and compliance.
- v.  CERT-In  has  empanelled  67  security  auditing  organizations to support  and  audit implementation of Information Security Best Practices.
- vi.  Cyber security mock drills are being conducted regularly to enable assessment of cyber security posture and preparedness of organizations in Government and critical sectors. 15  such  drills  have  so  far  been  conducted  by  CERT-In  where  148  organisations  from different  States  and  sectors  such  as  Finance,  Defence,  Power,  Telecom,  Transport, Energy,  Space,  IT/ITeS,  etc  participated.  In  addition  3  drills  were  conducted  in coordination  with  The  Reserve  Bank  of  India  and  The  Institute  for  Development  and Research in Banking Technology.
- vii. CERT-In conducts 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.  22 training programs covering 610 participants were conducted during the year 2017.
- viii. Government has initiated setting up of National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) to generate necessary situational awareness of existing and potential cyber security threats and enable timely information sharing for proactive, preventive and protective actions by individual entities. Phase-I of NCCC has been made operational.
- ix.  Government  has  launched  the  Cyber  Swachhta  Kendra  (Botnet  Cleaning  and  Malware Analysis Centre). The centre is providing detection of malicious programs and free tools to remove the same.

(c) and (d): In tune with the dynamic nature of Information Technology and limited window time available for an effective response, continuous efforts are required to be made to detect and  prevent  cyber  attacks  by  way  of      continuous  threat  assessment  and  near  real-time situational awareness. Such  timely information enables coordinated actions by the stakeholders to take appropriate proactive and preventive actions. Concerted efforts are made to harvest the requisite information from multiple sources. These include incidents reported to  and  tracked  by  Indian  Computer  Emergency  Response  Team  (CERT-In),  technical measures,  security  cooperation  arrangement  with  overseas  Computer  Emergency  Response Teams (CERTs) and leading security product and service vendors as well as agencies within the Government.

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