Lok Sabha Question No. 1879 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2019-07-03
Subject: Cyber Attacks and Cyber Terrorism
Ministry: ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Asked by: Rahul Ramesh Shewale, Bhartruhari Mahtab

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO.1879

TO BE ANSWERED ON: 03.07.2019

## CYBER ATTACKS AND CYBER TERRORISM

## 1879.  SHRI RAHUL RAMESH SHEWALE: SHRI BHARTRUHARI MAHTAB:

Will the Minister of Electronics & Information Technology be pleased to state:-

- (a) whether the Department of Telecom (DoT) has issued guidelines to  counter cyberattacks and cyber terrorism for Indian carrier and if so, the details of such guidelines;
- (b) whether the Government has reviewed such guidelines during each of the last three years and the current year and if so, the details and the outcome thereof;
- (c) whether the incidents of cyber-attacks and hacking of Indian websites from foreign countries particularly China and Pakistan are on the rise during the said period and if so, the details thereof, country-wise; and
- (d) the corrective steps taken by the Government in this regard?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI RAVI SHANKAR PRASAD)

- (a) and  (b): Department  of  Telecommunications  has  issued  comprehensive  security conditions  to  the  Telecom  Service  Providers  through  amendment  in  the  of  terms  and conditions of license agreement in May/June 2011. Subsequently these have been suitably made as an integral part of Unified License. The salient features are as follows:
- (i) The LICENSEE shall be completely and totally responsible for security of their networks.
- (ii) The  LICENSEE  shall  have  organizational  policy  on  security  and  security management of their networks including Network forensics, Network Hardening, Network penetration test, Risk assessment.
- (iii) The  LICENSEE  shall  audit  their  network  or  get  the  network  audited  from security  point  of  view  once  a  year  from  a  network  audit  and  certification agency.
- (iv)            The  LICENSEE  shall  induct  only  those  network  elements  into  its  telecom network,  which  have  been  got  tested  as  per  relevant  contemporary  Indian  or International Security Standards.
- (v)       The certification shall be got done only from authorized and certified agencies/ labs.
- (vi)     The LICENSEE shall keep record of all command logs.
- (vii)          The  LICENSEE  shall  create  facilities  for  the  monitoring  of  all  intrusions, attacks and frauds on his technical facilities and provide reports on the same to the Licensor/CERT-IN.

(c) : In tune with the dynamic nature of Information Technology and emerging cyber threats, continuous  efforts  are  required  to  be  made  by  owners  to  protect  networks  by  way  of hardening and deploying appropriate security controls. As per the information reported to and tracked  by  Indian  Computer  Emergency  Response  Team  (CERT-In)  a  total  number  of 33147,  30067, 17560 and 10930 Indian websites were hacked during the year 2016 , 2017, 2018 and 2019 (till May) respectively.

There have been attempts from time to time to launch cyber attacks on Indian cyber space. These  attacks  have  been  observed  to  be  originating  from  the  cyber  space  of  a  number  of countries including China and Pakistan.It has been observed that attackers are compromising computer systems located in different  parts of the world and use masquerading techniques and hidden servers to hide the identity of actual systems from which the attacks are being launched.

(d):    Government  has  taken  several  steps  to  prevent  such  cyber  security  incidents  and enhancing cyber security posture in the country: These, inter alia, include :

- (i) Government has established National Critical  Information  Infrastructure  Protection Centre (NCIIPC) for protection of critical information infrastructure in the country, as per the provisions of section 70A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000.
- (ii) The  Indian  Computer  Emergency  Response  Team  (CERT-In)  issues  alerts  and advisories  regarding  latest  cyber  threats  and  countermeasures  on  regular  basis. CERT-In has published guidelines for securing IT infrastructure, which are available on its website (www.cert-in.org.in).
- (iii) Government has issued guidelines for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) regarding their key roles and responsibilities for securing applications / infrastructure and compliance.
- (iv) All the government websites and applications are to be audited with respect to cyber security prior to their hosting.  The auditing of the websites and applications will be conducted on a regular basis after hosting also.
- (v) Government has empanelled 84 security auditing organisations to support and audit implementation of Information Security Best Practices.
- (vi) All  organizations  providing  digital  services  have  been  mandated  to  report  cyber security incidents to CERT-In expeditiously.
- (vii) Government  has  formulated  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.
- (viii) Cyber  security  mock  drills  and  exercises  are  being  conducted  regularly  to  enable assessment of cyber security posture and preparedness of organizations in Government and critical sectors. 43 such exercises have so far been conducted by CERT-In  where  organisations  from  different  sectors  such  as  Finance,  Defence, Power, Telecom, Transport, Energy, Space, IT/ITeS sectors participated.
- (ix) 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. 24 trainings covering 845 participants conducted in the year 2018.
- (x) 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.
- (xi) Government  has  set  up  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.

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