New Cyber Command to take battle to enemies
29 Jan 2013 6:54 AM IST
The planned Joint Cybersecurity Command (JCC) is one of the three joint commands that have been green signalled by the Union government ‘in principle,’ will be dominated by the Indian Navy. A senior official at the Integrated Defence Services (IDS) headquarters said this recently to Millennium News.
The cyber joint command will be more offensive in nature, he said, thus differentiating from the two cyber security organisations that have been in existence for sometime now. One of those is the Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-IN) provides the backbone of defensive nature to crucial national information technology nodes like in banking and railways.
At the beginning there will be pooling of resources of all the three services, as each of them have their own cyber cells. The Chief of the Integrated Defence Staff of the Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee, Lt Gen Naresh Chandra Marwah has given the ‘directions’ to begin the preliminary paper-work at the IDS HQ. Those will be circulated amongst all the three services and consensus developed for setting up the command in a five year time-frame.
The specialists at the IDS will develop the doctrine, strategy and other important elements of a new joint command. These will be debated within the government so that it can provide the approval for further ‘preparatory work’ to be undertaken, the official said.
An Associate Fellow of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, Cherian Samuel, who specialises on cyber security issue. He concurs with the proposition of the IDS to make the navy the primary agency for running command.
According to Cherian: ‘Though the navy is the smallest service, it is still ahead than the other two services in being more technology savvy. It also has within its ranks an outfit called the WESEE (Weapons, Electronic System and Engineering Establishment) is a perfect fit for just such assignments like that of a JCC. For, it already researches the cyber realm.’
He believes that for formation of the command, besides the doctrine and the laws of war, the speed of operations could actually overtake the decision-making pace of the chain of command, if it is too top heavy. ‘The ground-level commanders will have to be empowered more in the case of the cyber space.’
Also to be decided as a part of the ‘laws of war’ are issues of ‘proportionality,’ and what kind of ‘collateral damage’ could be withstood. For example, the collateral damage that needs to be taken into consideration are the ‘blowback’ of an attack on an adversary country’s financial infrastructure. That could almost inevitably affect the global financial system, which in turn could impact on the attacker country’s financial system too. He argues for a high degree of ‘redundancy’ to be built in so that if one part of the offensive system is brought by a counter-attack, the other parts ‘can pick up the slack.’
The cyber joint command will be more offensive in nature, he said, thus differentiating from the two cyber security organisations that have been in existence for sometime now. One of those is the Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-IN) provides the backbone of defensive nature to crucial national information technology nodes like in banking and railways.
At the beginning there will be pooling of resources of all the three services, as each of them have their own cyber cells. The Chief of the Integrated Defence Staff of the Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee, Lt Gen Naresh Chandra Marwah has given the ‘directions’ to begin the preliminary paper-work at the IDS HQ. Those will be circulated amongst all the three services and consensus developed for setting up the command in a five year time-frame.
The specialists at the IDS will develop the doctrine, strategy and other important elements of a new joint command. These will be debated within the government so that it can provide the approval for further ‘preparatory work’ to be undertaken, the official said.
An Associate Fellow of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, Cherian Samuel, who specialises on cyber security issue. He concurs with the proposition of the IDS to make the navy the primary agency for running command.
According to Cherian: ‘Though the navy is the smallest service, it is still ahead than the other two services in being more technology savvy. It also has within its ranks an outfit called the WESEE (Weapons, Electronic System and Engineering Establishment) is a perfect fit for just such assignments like that of a JCC. For, it already researches the cyber realm.’
He believes that for formation of the command, besides the doctrine and the laws of war, the speed of operations could actually overtake the decision-making pace of the chain of command, if it is too top heavy. ‘The ground-level commanders will have to be empowered more in the case of the cyber space.’
Also to be decided as a part of the ‘laws of war’ are issues of ‘proportionality,’ and what kind of ‘collateral damage’ could be withstood. For example, the collateral damage that needs to be taken into consideration are the ‘blowback’ of an attack on an adversary country’s financial infrastructure. That could almost inevitably affect the global financial system, which in turn could impact on the attacker country’s financial system too. He argues for a high degree of ‘redundancy’ to be built in so that if one part of the offensive system is brought by a counter-attack, the other parts ‘can pick up the slack.’
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