New Delhi: Amidst the ongoing controversy over alleged snooping by the government using Pegasus spyware, the shocking revelation by the Centre about the manifold increase in the cybersecurity incidents in the last three years may add to the woes of the government, which is already facing the heat of Opposition parties over alleged phone-tapping issue.
According to the latest data provided by Minister of State for Electronics and I-T Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the country witnessed about a three-time increase in the incidents of cybersecurity in the year 2020 in comparison to the previous year.
In a reply to a question, the minister informed Lok Sabha that India reported a total number of 3,94,499 cybersecurity incidents in the year 2019, which increased to 11,58,208 incidents in the year 2020. The cases of cybersecurity in 2021 may surpass the previous year's numbers as upto June, 2021, India has reported 6,07,220 incidents of cybersecurity.
However, the minister informed the House that Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) is mandated to track and monitor cybersecurity incidents in India.
Spelling out the measures taken by the government to enhance the cybersecurity posture and prevent cyber attacks, the minister said, "The CERT-In issues alerts and advisories regarding the latest cyber threats/vulnerabilities and countermeasures to protect computers, networks, and data on regular basis.
The CERT-In is sharing early warning threat intelligence alerts with over 700 organisations across sectors to enable active threat prevention."