Cyber crime, if left unchecked could snowball into cyber terrorism and paralyse the country, cautioned Amaresh Pujari, Inspector General – Intelligence, Tamil Nadu.

Speaking at a conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry on Énhancing Business Efficiency through Information Security”, he said ‘while Information Technology has revolutionised the destiny of the nation, it has not been designed for security as much as for interoperability.

India has been one of the major contributors to cyber crime, he said and stressed the need for cyber defence.

With an annual estimated loss of $250 billion, cyber crime presents a dark figure.

A good number of cases go unreported as people are hesitant to go on record and report such crimes. This is obvious from the 2,875+ cases reported in 2012, compared to the numbers using the Net.

Urging the participants to be more forthright in reporting such issues, he said íf left unreported, it could paralyse critical infrastructure such as banking and finance, water supply, transport, power, telecommunications, emergency services and government operations among others.

While emphasising the need for building capabilities among police personnel on cyber crime issues, he said ‘there is another conflict. One is not sure whether cyber crime matters will fall under Ministry of Home Affairs or National Security Council. This has to be settled, sorted out first.’

General Officer Commanding Lt Gen A.K. Pillai voiced concern over the sudden spurt in cyber crime incidents.

Çyber attacks have peaked to over 20,000 last year and defacement of sites hosted in Indian servers rose from 4,700 in 2005 to over 23,000 in 2012.

Virus related attacks are also on the rise, he said and stressed the need for public-private partnership for protection of critical information infrastructure.

revathy.lakshminarasimhan@thehindu.co.in

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