After the hacker group Legion recently hacked accounts of some key persons such as Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi, and said it would hack more such websites, including sansad-.nic.in, the government said it was making sure all its agencies were working hard to safeguard personal account details of citizens.
After recent reports of Twitter accounts being hacked, the government has also asked Twitter to reinforce their security systems and report every misdoing to Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).
Payments securitySpeaking to select media, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said the government in the last few days had pulled up its socks to audit, review and handle security walls.
He said the government was also working on reviewing the IT Act 2000 in the wake of the ongoing digital payment drive, adding that a closed group had been set up under Aruna Sundarajan, Secretary, MeitY, to look into various aspects of the Act.
“The IT Act came out in 2000. It has by and large served us well...Now, as we move towards digital economy, we are reviewing if there is a need to relook its architecture to make it more of a deterrent for cyber criminals,” Prasad said.
Since there is huge traffic on IT platform, the government is adopting methods to take appropriate and stricter action against violators, he said.
Also, the government has set up a separate digital payments division under CERT-In to monitor and strengthen the digital payment infrastructure 24x7. The government also has one cyber security officer (Central Information Security Officer) in each of the government departments.
“We have also told digital payment agencies or gateways to report any unusual movement by anyone on their platforms immediately to CERT-In. We have Botnet Cleaning and Malware Centre, a Crack Team at CERT-In to handle such issues,” Prasad said.
To strengthen cyber security, MeitY had recently approved 26 new posts in CERT-In and five State CERTs, said the Minister, adding that the government was undertaking a massive programme to create awareness among the administrative machinery so that information is passed on to citizens.
However, Prasad said while the government was trying its best to resolve issues and protect one’s account, people too need to be careful and alert.
Creating awarenessAccording to experts, having a well-entrenched security framework is the need of the hour. “The government should also undertake initiatives to educate and make individuals aware about basic internet hygiene, which will in turn, go a long way in preventing and mitigating cyber crimes in the long run. Cyber crimes are getting sophisticated by the day and well-conceptualised policy reforms can indeed save the day,” Nilesh Jain, Country Manager, Trend Micro, said.
Meanhile, Prasad also met with senior representatives of the public and private sector banks and other key departments and emphasised the need for utmost rigour in ensuring and complying with RBI guidelines with the current focus on increased use of digital payment transactions.
The meeting also deliberated various issues relating to Technology and Security of UPI, USSD, RuPay and Aadhaar-Enabled Payment Systems. It was informed that National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will soon launch a redesigned USSD platform and a common app for UPI for enabling digital transactions and addressing inter-operability issues.