Indian government has taken a new initiative to train five lakh cyber warriors in the next five years to meet a critical gap in India’s defences.
A government-private sector plan will look at beefing up India’s cyber security capabilities in the light of a group of experts reckoning that India faces a 4.7 lakh shortfall of such experts despite the country’s reputation of being an IT and software powerhouse.
Efforts to draw a strategic plan for India, being overseen by National Security Advisor ( NSA) Shivshankar Menon, may need to be speeded up as India lags the research and planning leading western and Asian nations have already undertaken.
Cyber warfare has emerged a top threat to national security with India’s systems subjected to an increasing number – and more sophisticated cyber attacks. India faced a severe test during the 2010 Commonwealth Games when cyber attacks to what officials said here from Pakistan and China sought to damage information systems.
Most of the attacks India deals with originate from countries like the US, China, Russia, a few east European countries and Iran. Chinese hackers have targeted a large number of institutions, even stealing data from schools run by the armed forces, Times of India said in a report on Tuesday.
A Canadian investigation in 2010 revealed that Chinese hackers had reached Indian missions at Kabul, Moscow, Dubai, Abuja, US, Serbia, Belgium, Germany, Cyprus, the UK and Zimbabwe. A machine at the National Security Council secretariat was tapped as were computers at military engineering services (MES), the newspaper added.
