Hyderabad, July 04: Is it time India braced itself for a cyber war? Well, looking at the potential threat posed by outside forces to invade the Indian cyber space time and again, experts say it definitely is.
“The safety and security of the country is at stake and it is time we remained vigilant” this was opined by none other than the CEO and MD of Infosys, S.Gopalkrishnan, referring to the increasing cyber attacks on the nation. He was delivering a lecture on ‘Future of IT in Modern Warfare in Context of Cyber Security’ at the College of Defence Management (CDM) here today.
“In April this year India was a victim of serious cyber attacks. Though the motive and identity is still unknown, according to a report it was the work of the Chinese. The attacks like these pose a threat to the national security. To launch such attacks not much resources are needed as the job can be finished by a capable team of hackers,” he said and suggested that strong nationallevel policies are needed to effectively counter this menace. “The government need to partner with the IT companies to fix flaws and sound an alarm whenever needed.”
He said that it was not uncommon to see attacks on government establishments and companies by hackers. “Confidential or important data can be smuggled by hacking or introducing a virus on the network and taking control of it. Though they are not violent, actions such as these can cause huge damages.” He said that what was missing from the Indian scenario was longterm research.
“For instance, there only 100 Ph.Ds every year in India whereas in China a single university produces as many. We need to create capabilities and all the organisations and other bodies must be prepared for any eventualities.” On what needs to be done at the office level to get protection, he said “Make sure have we have the latest systems and the best people managing it. Many government departments do not have upgradation of recent softwares or the latest patches which makes the system vulnerable. Even the system passwords should be complex and long. These small steps will go a long way in protecting the systems.”
Stating that his company was always open to work with the defence department in this regard, he spoke about the measures being taken by Infosys to protect itself from any such attacks.
“We are able to protect ourselves well. Our network is monitored and all emails are checked for certain patterns. Also all social networking sites are blocked in the network. Any suspicious activity is looked into immediately,” he said.
–Agencies