PUNE: Rear Admiral Mohit Gupta, chief of Defence Cyber Agency (DCA), a tri-service command of the Indian Armed Forces, on Thursday said that a National Cyber Security Strategy is being formulated to build a secure and resilient cyberspace for citizens, organisations and the government.
He was speaking at a seminar on ‘Cyber Security – National Strategy and Emerging Trends’ during the ‘Capsule on Science Technology and Applied Research’ (CAPSTAR), at Military Institute of Technology (MILIT), Khadakwasla. The capsule theme for this year is ‘Military Robotics, Autonomous Systems, Cyber Security and Artificial Intelligence’.
Rear Adm Gupta spoke about the existing strategies of certain countries worldwide and highlighted the key points that would form part of India’s cyber strategy. “We made a start with the Information Technology Act in 2000, which was amended in 2008 and subsequently the National Cyber Security Policy was framed in 2013. There is an exercise underway to prepare the National Cyber Security Strategy, which is to be released in 2020. Unlike the policy of 2013, which was released by a ministry, this strategy will be released by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). This will be tabled to the Cabinet Committee on security by the end of this year and by January 2020, we will have a strategy in place with a tenure of five years,” he informed.
AVM Vivek Rajhans, Commandant, MILIT, spoke about the growing level of cyber threat originating from hostile state and non-state actors who are skilled at exploiting vulnerabilities of the cyberspace. He also emphasised that tackling the threat requires concerted and collective action to build resilience, to contain threats, to mitigate the impact of successful attacks and to respond to them.
A panel discussion on the subject was moderated by Commodore Vombatkere, Indian Navy, and the speakers included PICT Dean Prof DB Ingle, Principal Scientist Cybersecurity at TCS Dr Sachin Lodha, cyber forensics expert Shweta Chawla and entrepreneur and advisor to the Department of Science and Technology Rohit Srivastava.
The seminar was attended by over 200 tri-service participants from MILIT, College of Military of Engineering (CME), and National Defence Academy (NDA).
