Dealing With Cyber Attacks

In the wake of recent cyber attacks that have raised serious questions on the reliability of digital platforms, BW Businessworld held a roundtable session on 31 March, 2017 to discuss cyber security in India, the challenges and sustainable solutions.

The panellists Saket Modi, CEO, Lucideus; Dr. Pary Aftab, Executive Director and Founder, Cybersafety.in and Arun Kumar Pandey, Digital Forensic Expert spoke on digital economy, cyber security, its challenges and solutions.

Technology is an integral part of our lives, and no longer restricted to office automation. India, is leapfrogging to the west on the digital economy.

There are almost 300 million smartphone users in India at present, which means one out of every four Indians is digitally literate. The number of smart phone users has increased from 20 million to 300 million in the past 24 months.

In order to create a participative, transparent, and responsive government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched “Digital India Programme.” The campaign is a flagship programme of the government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society.

The issue right now is to create a safe digital ecosystem, which is well regulated, monitored, spreads awareness about the digital space and under a well governed policy.

What we need to understand is that cyber safety, cyber privacy and cyber security are all completely different aspects. In India we have the right hardware, the right software but what we lack is the correct training and awareness. Cyber security affects people as well as businesses.

Dr. Parry Aftab believes that India has the right atmosphere brewing for the kind of cyber security networks required in the country. But the right training is required in this area. She also believes raising more ethical hackers can help tackle the situation.

“India has to have more policy minds than engineering minds. If policies are made outside then it won’t address the issues persisting in this country,” said Aftab.

Discussing the possible solutions Modi said that it is time we should focus on technologies to combat the existing technologies that we have.

“India is not ready yet in terms of security, information and technology in this space. We have clearly made progress, but a lot more needs to be done. It is a good sign that the PM is so technology savvy,” he added.

Arun Kumar explained about the flaws in the policy for cyber law in the country. He said it is not a problem of flaw in the policy but in its implementation. “We should focus more on IT act and its awareness to each and every citizen of the country,” said Kumar.

The key to the lock here lies in an amalgamation of the right education, policy, technology and ethics. This can lead us to a safer cyber world.