CYBER THREAT

Cyber space is considered as 5

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Global Commons after sea, air, space and outer space. Cyberspace is the life

and blood of the internet and has become most important in terms of information sharing and processing. There has been an unprecedented rise in the number of cyber-attacks on the critical infrastructure across the world. Clandestine and undetected attack on critical infrastructure by non-state actors and nation states can cause serious disruption and can even cripple economy spreading anarchy and disorder in the target countries. American theorist Joseph Nye has divided Cyber threats into four different categories: 1. Cyber War: It is characterized as the unauthorized invasion by a nation state into the systems or networks of another aiming to disrupt those systems. A specific target is to slow down if not curtail the military system of the target state. China officially spends about US $ 5.5 million per year for strategic hacking. The Red Hackers Alliances is known to render services to Chinese Government. On similar lines Pakistan has also started using Cyber warfare. The Pakistan based group H4TRCK has hacked various Indian defense websites in recent past. According to The New York Times, STUXNET by Isreal was the biggest weapon used against Iran to mitigate its nuclear program. Cyber Espionage: This is done by the nations to steal the sensitive information of the target country. These attacks are generally hard to discover since the target systems remain functioning. Earlier this year, a highly sophisticated attack called Flame was discovered in Russia, Hungary and Iran. Flame had been copying documents, recording audio etc and was passing them to the controlling systems. Cyber Crime: Cyber Crimes are generally aimed at ordinary citizens across the globe. These have impact on the lives of ordinary internet users. Cyber Crimes includes pornography, stalking, personality imitation, phishing, 4. plagiarism etc. Cyber Terrorism: It includes websites spreading extremist propaganda, recruiting terrorist, planning attacks. It can also involves hacking of critical networks and website however the technical difference between a Cyber War and Cyber Terrorism is that the former involves nation states while the latter involves non state actors like terrorist groups etc.

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Tackling Cyber Threat: Indian Context

In India, the present day Cyber Defense is insufficient and far from satisfactory. The approach of the governmental agencies in this regard can be best described as ad hoc and piecemeal. In the present structure about 12 stakeholders are involved in protecting the Cyberspace in India. The nodal agency which deals with the Cyber threat in India is Indian Computer Emergency Response Team. However since the stakeholder ministers involved are 12 in number, this leads to duplicity of functions and multiplicity of commands, which can make any agency ineffective and full of red tapes. The following are the recommendations to tackle Cyber threats more effectively: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. There is a need to build lawful interception capabilities to monitor electronic communication, including encrypted communication in the real time. A fully empowered national head for cyber security should be appointed backed by a legitimate structure that specifically lays down roles and responsibilities of public and private sector stakeholders. A National Threat Intelligence Centre should be established within Computer Emergency Response Team i.e. the present nodal agency dealing with Cyber threats. A center for excellency for best practices in Cyber security should be established Within defense forces, Cyber command should be set up fully equipped with defensive and offensive weapons and capabilities in Cyber espionage To address the shortage of cyber security manpower, a competency framework should be implemented to assess security skill requirement. Inventory of critical information infrastructure should be drawn upon to help handle the cyber-attacks.