Pune: In a bid to build capabilities to fight advanced cyber threats, the State government will soon set up a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT)- Maharashtra, on the lines of CERT-India. It will have experts from Army, Navy, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and other cyber security agencies. 

CERT-India is the national incident response centre for major computer security incidents in the Indian cyber community. CERT-India operates a 24x7 incident response helpdesk and coordinates responses to security incidents and related events. It also enlightens about the security awareness and best practices for various systems and networks by publishing advisories, guidelines and other technical documents regularly.

Superintendent of Police (Maharashtra Cyber) Balsing Rajput told Sakal Times, "We have established 47 cyber labs in all police districts of the State. Now, we are in the process setting up CERT-Maharashtra on the lines of CERT-India. The next step will be establishment of dedicated cyber crime police stations and predictive policing after establishment of data centres. At present, we are giving priority to CERT. The data centre will help us map the move of criminals before they act."

He was speaking on the sidelines of cyber security workshop on 'Making our Future Digitally Safe - We fight cyber crime (CC)', organised by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) and Cyber Cell of Pune city police at Mahatma Phule Sanskrutik Bhavan in Wanowrie. There were over 1,000 teachers in attendance at the programme, which was addressed by experts from cyber security domain.

DCP (EOW and Cyber Cell) Sudhir Hiremath gave a brief overview of the conference and said the cyber cell has initiated a large scale cybercrime awareness drive entitled #WeFightCC to create awareness amongst school children, teachers and parents about cyber crime and policing. "We want to train teachers about the finer nuances of preventing cyber crime and inform students about the dangers of falling prey to digital and new age crimes on the Internet. The teachers will further spread the knowledge to students (about 20,000) in Pune," DCP Hiremath said. IL Narsimha Rao, project manager, CDAC, spoke about ISEA Awareness on Security Tools while MD Career Corner's Rushikesh Humbe talked about 'The Road Ahead'.