India’s Increasing Vulnerability Leads to Cyber Sabotage

Cyber sabotage of a censorious infrastructure is a new-age threat that has erupted majorly in the last decade. As weird as it may sound, it is a reality that has become so invasive that even the common man has started feeling its heat. It is important to know how our lawmakers are dealing with this threat.

An effort has been made to inspect the existing legal framework and identify the markers making it inefficient. Cyber sabotage is a term that involves state and non-state actors targeting the computing systems and controlling the censorious infrastructure of a nation. The sabotage can be for a variety of purposes ranging from mere disruption in public services to creating disruptions to demands of ransom and observations by enemy nations.

The Government's tranquillity and lack of transparency in communicating incidents of cyber-sabotage on the country's censorious infrastructure is the primary reason for the wrong estimation of this 21st-century threat. To explain the depravity of the situation, a few statistics should be brought to light.

As per the information conferred by the union home ministry based on data reported by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team ('CERT-In'), India's nodal cyber-security agency to the Parliament in March 2021, the country saw a huge 1.15 million cyber-attacks in 2020.

Most attacks aim at censorious infrastructure followed by banking, defense, and then manufacturing sectors. In censorious infrastructure, oil and natural gas prerequisites are targeted the most. During the pandemic, there has been a vital increase in attacks on India's critical healthcare infrastructure and pharma companies. Ransomware attacks on the pharma sector have intensified the most. It has been observed that the cyber-attacks on India's censorious infrastructure are increasing, calling for more strong prevention, detection, and reaction policy.

For dealing with the existing and emerging threats of cyber sabotage, the policy framework is required to be split into three key elements.

• Detection of cyber-attacks

• Fast reaction for limiting future damage

• Prevention mechanism including strong systems that will strengthen software and hardware used in censorious infrastructure.