India Needs a Strong Firewall

By Shivanand Pandit

Cybercrimes are increasing across the world. In particular, India has witnessed a tremendous jump in the number of cybercrimes. According to information provided by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) to a parliamentary panel, between 2018 and 2021, there was a five-fold increase in cybercrimes and cyber fraud incidents recorded by the government. On the other hand, amidst an increase in cyberattacks, the central government is yet to execute the National Cyber Security Strategy, which has been happening ever since 2020. The ministry told the panel that India has experienced a noteworthy surge in cases of cyber fraud and cyber-linked occurrences in the previous three years. An increase in phishing attacks, financial frauds, mail-spams and ransomware attacks were reported during the Covid-19 lockdown, when people largely worked from home, as attackers impersonated brands and deceived employees and customers.

According to facts available with the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the government agency for computer security, the number of cybercrimes increased from 2,08,456 in 2018 to 14,02,809 in 2021. That is approximately a 572% surge in three years! Also, 2,12,485 such incidents have been recorded in the first two months of 2022 itself! Indian organizations have seen a 218% surge in ransomware attacks in 2021, making India the 10th most targeted nation, worldwide, and second after Australia in the Asia-Pacific region. India was graded amongst the leading 10 countries out of 193 in cyber security posture for 2020. India climbed from the 47th position in 2018 to the 10th position in 2020. According to the American cyber security organization Palo Alto Networks’ 2021 report, Maharashtra was the most targeted state in India—facing 42% of all the ransomware attacks.

India is among the more reasonably lucrative countries for hacker groups and these hackers ask Indian firms to pay a ransom or money, usually using crypto-currencies, in order to regain access to their data. A worrying 25% of Indian organizations suffered a ransomware attack in 2021. This is higher than the international average of 21%. Software and…