'Centre to unveil national cyber security strategy soon'

New Delhi: The government will release a new cybersecurity strategy this year, National Cyber Security Coordinator Rajesh Pant said at an event organised by Public Affairs Forum of India (PAFI).

He said the strategy would holistically cover the entire ecosystem of cyber space in India.

The government is expected to release a new cybersecurity strategy this year, he said speaking at the PAFI event on Friday.

"The vision of this strategy is to ensure safe, secure, resilient, vibrant, and trusted cyber space," Pant said.

The new strategy would serve as a guideline to tackle various aspects, be it data as a national resource, building indigenous capabilities or cyber audit.

"There are about 80 odd deliverables coming out of this new strategy," the PAFI statement quoted Pant as saying.

The theme of the PAFI Dialogue was 'Cyber Security in the New Normal.'

On the national security narrative for the telecom sector, Pant said, "While other nations have created a black-list of companies that cannot operate in the country, India is the only nation to create a white-list of telecom companies that are allowed to operate in India".

The companies allowed must be a 'trusted source', he said adding, "We were able to create and launch the trusted telecom portal during the pandemic and within six months.

India has made it to the top 10 in Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) 2020 by ITU, moving up 37 places to rank as the tenth best country in the world on key cybersafety parameters.

The affirmation by the UN body of India's efforts on cybersecurity, comes just ahead of the sixth anniversary of Digital India on July 1. India is emerging as a global IT superpower, asserting its digital sovereignty with firm measures to safeguard data privacy and online rights of citizens.

As per the ranking, India has moved up by 37 places to rank as the tenth best country in the world in the Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) 2020 launched by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on June 29, 2021.

The US topped the chart, followed by the UK and Saudi Arabia tied on the second position, while Estonia was ranked third in the index.

India has also secured the fourth position in the Asia Pacific region, underlining its commitment to cybersecurity.

GCI assessment is done on the basis of performance on five parameters of cybersecurity including legal measures, technical measures, organisational measures, capacity development, and cooperation. The performance is then aggregated into an overall score.

For each of the five aspects, all the countries' performance and commitment were assessed through a question-based online survey, which further allowed for the collection of the supporting evidence.

Through in-depth consultations with a group of experts, the questions were then weighted and assessed, to arrive at the overall scores.