India saw over 3.5 lakh cyber security incidents in the month of July and August, triple the number of incidents that it saw in the first three months of 2020, the Union Minister of state for electronics and information technology Sanjay Dhotre said in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Dhotre, responding to a question from BJP MP Vishnu Dayal Ram, quoted data from Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), saying that cyber security incidents were seeing an increase during the Covid-19 pandemic. He said that between January and March, the country saw over 1.13 lakh cyber security incidents and increased to over 2.3 lakh incidents in the quarter to June.
CERT-In is operating 24X7 Incident Response Helpdesk. CERT-In has tracked, received reports and handled a total number of 53117, 208456, 394499 and 696938 cyber security incidents during the year 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 (till August) respectively, he said.
CERT-In issued 23 advisories on various topics such as secure use of web conferencing software, securing mobile devices and apps, online safety of children and various phishing attack campaigns pretending to be from popular apps and services. It also issued 37 advisories regarding securing digital payments, for users and institutions.
Government has established a National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) for protection of critical information infrastructure in the country, as per the provisions of section 70A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000.
“Cyber space is ever evolving and dynamic and is a complex environment of people, software, hardware and services on the Internet. Protection of cyberspace is a continuous effort and the Government is taking necessary measures for the same,” Dhotre said.
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