Cyber Security
India is playing a new role in Asia and being a responsible nation, some major developments are going on in Defense, IT, Trade & Commerce. Our growth rate is going good; government’s large programs like Digital India and Make in India are operational. Few days back during Digital India week launch, PM Mr. Narendra Modi has said that “clouds of a bloodless war are hovering over the world. The world is terrified by this….India has a big role to play in this. India has talent. India can provide a shield to the world by providing innovative and credible solutions; we should accept this challenge to ensure that the entire humanity lives in peace”.
The approach of our government towards cyber security is serious, US and Israel are global players in the field of cyber security and our exchanges with both are moving towards a positive direction. Cyber security is an opportunity for India, US and Israel to work together. The research reports on cyber security indicates that these three countries are most vulnerable to cyber attacks in the world. Indian IT industry is vibrant and this good atmosphere will push cyber security research. According to NASSCOM, global IT security market is estimated to be worth $77 billion in 2015 and growing at more than 8 percent annually.
Here I’m sharing some challenges which can be seen as an opportunity:
According to an ASSOCHAM-Mahindra SSG study conducted this year the number of cyber crimes in India may reach 300,000 in 2015, almost double the level of last year.
Apart from domestic cyber threats, India also faces tough cyber-attacks from countries including Pakistan, China, UAE, US, Turkey, Brazil, Bangladesh, Algeria and some European nations. In the month of April FireEye Inc, released a report which says that hackers, most likely from China, have been spying on governments and businesses in Southeast Asia and India uninterrupted for a decade.
As per the statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau and other sources:
1,791 cases were registered in 2011, which grew to 2,876 cases in 2012 and to 4,356 cases by 2013.
Hacking formed close to 60% of all cyber offenses.
58% attacks are for financial gains and 42% by foreign governments.
155 .GOV and .NIC domains were hacked last year
32,323 public Indian website were hacked in 2014 with 14 per cent Y-o-Y increase
Cyber Security and Indian Startups: During last few months we heard about some serious attempts to hack the databases of Indian startups such as Ola and Gaana. Indian websites are increasingly becoming victims of cyber attacks. According to confidential CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) reports, last year4191 Indian websites were defaced or hacked in August, 2380 in July, 2858 in June and 1,808 in May. A majority of these attacks happened on .in domains, whose servers are located in India, the.in domain appears the most vulnerable to attacks, some of the main hackers and defacers namely are SA3D HaCk3D, h4x0r HuSsY, SanFour2S, BD GREY HAT HACKERS, Suwario, Spy-Dy, hasnain haxor and CouCouM.
Few days back Kaspersky Labs has revealed a new lethal malware named Grabit, which infected as many as 10,000 files at SMEs and Startups based mostly in India, Thailand and the US, with India and Thailand housing maximum number of infected machines. The report further states, that the list of infected countries also includes the UAE, Germany, Israel, Canada, France, Austria, Sri Lanka, Chile and Belgium. The infected enterprises belong to variety of sectors including chemicals, nanotechnology, education, agriculture, media and construction etc. Kaspersky Lab documentation points out that the campaign started somewhere in late February 2015 and ended in mid-March. Kaspersky Lab also revealed that a keylogger in just one of the command-and-control servers was able to steal 2887 Passwords, 1053 Emails and 3023 Usernames from 4928 different hosts, internally and externally, including Outlook, Facebook, Skype, Google mail, Pinterest, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as bank accounts and others.
Latest Happenings: In this first week of July, Global cyber security companyTaaSera has launched its business in India, the TaaSera group also tied up with security company Symantec to train Indians to deal with cyber threats. Indian Government has aimed to step up cyber security measures under Digital India programme starting with a Rs. 800-crore center that will help people check and clean their computer system from viruses and other malwares. Under this initiative, the National Cyber Security and Coordination Centre (NCSC) will analyze Internet traffic data scanned and integrated from various gateway routers at a centralized location. It will facilitate real-time assessment of cyber-security threats and generate actionable reports for various agencies. As a multi-agency body under the Department of Electronics and IT, the NCSC will include the National Security Council Secretariat, the Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the National Technical Research Organization (NTRO), the three armed forces and the Department of Telecommunications.
Recently NASSCOM and Symantec have signed a pact to develop world class skilled and certified cyber security professionals. This partnership will focus on developing five prioritized job roles in cyber security along with a master training programme which also has scope to fund scholarship for 1,000 women undertaking the cyber security certification by NASSCOM. Nasscom has also launched a ‘Nasscom Cyber Security Task Force’, which aims to make India the hub for cyber security related research, training and products, the task force, being chaired by NIIT chairman Rajendra Pawar, will come up with a comprehensive cyber security plan within the next 12 weeks. It aims to take the cyber security industry market share in India from 1% of the IT-BPM industry to 10% by 2025, with a trained base of 1 million certified cyber security professionals, as well as build over 100 security product companies in India.
Advance Technology Park of Israel: In Sep’ 2013 Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu inaugurated Advanced Technology Park on the campus of Ben Gurion University in Be’er Sheva. The primary mission of the Advanced Technologies Park is to promote technology and commercialization of cutting-edge research and innovation being developed through BGU (BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY) and affiliate institutions. ATP creates a symbiotic relationship between three potent entities: academe, Tech companies and Israeli Defense Force.
Once Dr. Moti Herskowitz (Dean of Research and Development, BGU), has said that“Our research model is that we have no model, which is the strength of it. We deal with it case by case”. I appreciate his view because R&D team should think like this. One of BGU’s key catalysts in bridging the gap between academe and industry is its commercialization arm, BGN Technologies, which uses a unique model for what it calls “technology transfer”, under this model the university takes valuable ideas and brings them to market by partnering with a company or selling the company a patent. So far BGN Technologies has signed agreements with over 150 companies, including ExxonMobile, Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, and General Motors. BGN Technologies has been so successful at this that universities from the U.S. and Europe are studying their approach.
These are some popular Israeli cyber security organizations: CyberArk Software, Imperva Data Center Security Solutions, ThetaRay, CyberSeal, BioCatch,Seculert, Votiro, Argus Cyber Security, SenseCy, Check Point Software Technologies, Covertix, Lacoon Mobile Security
Global Cyber Security Market: These studies are done by different global agencies, gives a good idea about global Cyber Security Market, let’s take a look…
CyberSecurity Market Report 2015
White house cybersecurity efforts 2015