53,000 cybersecurity incidents observed during 2017: Prasad

New Delhi: Over 53,000 cyber security incidents, including phishing, website intrusions and defacements and ransomware were observed in 2017, Parliament on Friday said.

"As per the information reported to and tracked by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a total number of 49,455, 50,362 and 53,081 cyber security incidents were observed during the year 2015, 2016 and 2017, respectively," IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha on Friday.

He added that the types of incidents include phishing, scanning/probing, website intrusions and defacements, virus/malicious code, ransomware and denial of service attacks.

The minister pointed out that CERT-In issues alerts and advisories regarding latest cyber threats/vulnerabilities and countermeasures to protect computers on regular basis.

Also, tailored alerts are sent to key organisations to enable them to detect and prevent cyber attacks, he said.

The government has initiated setting up of National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) in CERT-In to generate necessary situational awareness of existing and potential cyber security threats and enable timely information sharing for proactive, preventive and protective actions by individual entities, Prasad said adding that phase I of NCCC has been made operational.