The Indian government has set up NIC- CERT centre to prevent cyber attacks on the government networks.
“All communications between government departments — Centre, State, and district, as well as interactions between the government and the citizens, takes place through NIC’s network,” country’s IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
Cyber attacks in India have significantly increased in the recent years, prompting country’s government to take extraordinary measures to protect critical data.
The NIC-CERT centre will monitor, detect and prevent country’s public networks.
“This is the establishment of an institution in India’s pursuit of safe and secure cyberspace. Any unusual movement on the NIC network, any attacks, intrusions will be detected and cleaned,” Prasad said.
Upon detecting a malicious activity, NIC-CERT will also alert the concerned parties.
The NIC-CERT centre will monitor, detect and prevent India’s public networks.
“The NIC-CERT will help us in our pursuit of a safe cyberspace by early detection of any attack on India’s systems,” he said.
The networks of (National Informatics Centre) are capable of handling about 500 GB of data at any given point in time.
NIC-CERT will also work in close coordination and collaboration with sectoral CERTs and CERT-In.
The team at NIC-CERT will use various tools to identify vulnerabilities and possible exploits and the intelligence gathered will enable CERT to predict and prevent attacks.
Currently, a team of 30 cyber security professionals has been working at the NIC-CERT centre.
Prasad said he has also summoned a meeting of state IT ministers in the next month during which will focus on cybersecurity and safety.
“In January, we will have a meeting of (state) IT ministers and cyber security and safety will be an important component of that discussion. I have directed that the role of state governments has to be expanded in the area of cyber security,” said Prasad.
