India’s first law enforcement Chief Information Security Officers’ (CISO) council was launched by DGP Anjani Kumar and Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan at the Cyberabad Police Commissionerate recently. The CISO council will partner with public and private institutions to tackle cyber security threats in real time.
The State police, with the support of industry and academia, launched the CISO council, in the presence of secretary for Society for Cyberabad Security Council (SCSC) Ramesh Kaza.
“The definition of crime is changing fast. Cyber criminals operate remotely without any geographical constraints,” said Mr. Kumar during the launch.
“This poses a lot of challenges for the police. The rate at which cyber crimes are rising, $8 trillion will be lost to cyber crimes by the end of 2023, which is almost a third of the GDP of the United States in 2022 and twice as much as India’s projected GDP this year,” he said.
The CISO council will be a beacon of cyber security in Telangana. It is the best example of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model that we often talk about. Cyber security breaches are multiplying and will grow by leaps and bounds when the next billion internet users start going digital. The enterprises are also going to be at risk,” said Mr. Ranjan.
He cited an example of his meeting with Ajay Banga, formerly with Master Cards, who shared that the company in the US was subjected to 10,000 cyber attacks in a day and that the number would go up to 30,000 attempts.
Mr. Ranjan asked the CISO council to work with the IT department and a few Centres of Excellence in the State such as Security Operations Centre, Cyber Security Centre of Excellence, Data Security Council of India and Computer Emergency Response Team. “The CISO council should work with start-ups as they are known for innovative and agile thinking and are tools of development, apart from engaging ethical hackers,” he said.
“With a 300% increase in cyber crime cases in the last one year, we need to get our defence strong to tackle online crooks,” said Cyberabad Police Commissioner Stephen Raveendra.
“Government organisations, critical infrastructure, and industry, including vulnerable MSMEs, are repeatedly besieged by threats and are ill-equipped to handle it, compared to their larger multinational counterparts. The recent targeted attacks on the government and critical infrastructure institutions during the G20 event in Delhi highlights the imminent need to institutionalise the fight against cyber threats,” he said.
Mr. Kaza said that ransomware attacks are up by 200%, especially password-based attacks. “This year, approximately 1,56,000 daily BEC (Business Email Compromise) attempts were observed. Attacks targeting open-source software have grown by an average 742%. Gartner analysts predicted that over the next two years, 45% of global organisations will be impacted by a supply chain attack,” he said.
