India blames China of massive cyber attacks
Shares
New Delhi (Sputnik) — Almost a year after Narendra Modi-led government introduced sweeping measures, including demonetization of high-value currency notes, to promote a digital economy, India is faced with a new challenge of financial frauds in the digital space.
Several cases of cyber fraud have been registered in the recent months, the origin of most of which, have been traced to China. In this backdrop, the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh recently convened a special meeting to assess the situation and prepare a counter plan for preventing such frauds in the future. The country's top bureaucrats and highest ranking officials of security agencies provided crucial inputs during the meeting.
"It was decided that an inter-ministerial committee may be set up to identify action points and monitor the implementation," a statement issued by the Home Ministry said.
Capacity building of various stakeholders such as police officers, judicial officers, forensic scientists as well as officials in the banking sector, has been identified as the key measure, the official added.
As many as 144 thousand cyber attacks were observed in the country in last three years, a government report says. As per the information available with the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the cases of cybercrimes have been on a continuous rise.India witnessed one of the biggest financial data breaches in its banking history recently. Over 32 lakh debit cards of some 19 banks across the country were hacked. Customers affected include those from some of the top banks in India like State Bank of India, Yes Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and many others.
India has set a target to make its digital economy worth $1 trillion by the year 2022. Presently it is around $450 billion.
