53,000 cybersecurity cases observed in 2017: IT minister

Over 53,000 cybersecurity incidents, including phishing, website intrusions, defacements and ransomware were observed in 2017, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in the Rajya Sabha on Friday.

“As per the information reported to and tracked by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a total number of 49,455, 50,362 and 53,081 cybersecurity incidents were observed during the year 2015, 2016, and 2017, respectively,” Prasad said.

The minister pointed out that CERT-In issues alerts and advisories regarding latest cyber threats or vulnerabilities and countermeasures to protect computers on regular basis. Also, tailored alerts are sent to key organisations to enable them to detect and prevent cyber attacks, he said.

The government has initiated setting up of National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) in CERT-In to generate necessary situational awareness of existing and potential cybersecurity threats. And to enable timely information sharing for proactive, preventive and protective actions by individual entities, Prasad said, adding that phase-I of NCCC is operational now.

He said that some instances of social media being misused for posting objectionable contents, defaming public personalities and to spread terror propaganda have come to the notice of the government.

“The Information Technology Act, 2000, has provisions for removal of objectionable online content,” he added.

Prasad said the IT (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules 2011, under section 79 of the IT Act requires that intermediaries observe due-diligence while discharging their duties and inform users of computer resources not to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, update or share any information that is harmful, objectionable, affect minors and unlawful in any way.