The Hindu Business Line : ‘Quick response must to combat cyber crime’

Cyber matter: The Union Minister for Home, Mr Shivraj Patil, flanked by the Secretary General of the ICPO - Interpol, Mr Ronald K. Noble (right), and the CBI Director, Mr Vijay Shanker, at the ‘7th International conference on cyber crime’, in the Capital on Wednesday. —

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Sept. 12 Pointing out that rising global instances of cyber crimes – often transcending national borders - had thrown up special challenges, the Union Home Minister, Mr Shivraj Patil, today emphasised the need for quick response to the Interpol references and bilateral requests for information sharing and data preservation.

“There should a liberal sharing of forensic technology for achieving standardisation of expert efforts. There should also be more cross-country training exchange programmes. Timely alerts should be provided by affected countries to others regarding new forms of crime and new modus operandi,” Mr Patil said inaugurating Interpol’s 7th International conference on Cyber Crime here.

Cyber crime today represents a wide array of offences. “Hacking, spoofing and botnet attacks are capable of causing serious security breaches in the information system of vital installations,” he said adding that the potential damage on account of such attacks, to the national security was immense.

“Globally, instances of money laundering through e-channels for terrorist funding have assumed menacing proportions,” he said and warned that Internet was being used as a secure means for internal communication among terrorists, and also for hate campaigns through social networking sites.

Though India has developed a full fledged indigenous cyber forensic software package, “we have a long way to go and are in the process of evolving systems and methodologies to stem the menace,” he said. Terming cyber crimes as “serious offences”, he said it should “capture the priority attention of lawmakers and members of the law enforcement agencies.”