There’s a gaping hole in India’s e-security

THE HINDU 
S.Ronendra
February 15, 2018

NEW DELHI, For a government that is keen to promote e-transactions, this is worrisome statistics: as many as 15 crore of the 230 crore e-transactions carried out just last week, which include financial and other transactions, were compromised. That’s a breach of one in every 15 transactions.

That sobering revelation was made by senior officials to Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad at the ‘State IT Ministers Conclave’ here on Tuesday.

Sources privy to the proceedings told BusinessLine that the Minister was informed that 40 per cent of cyberattacks today happen on financial and government websites, especially for phishing, denial of service attack and ransom-ware attack.

“The maximum number of breaches happen on Gmail (Google) accounts, as the maximum number of Internet users (500 million) have smartphones that are based on Android (again Google) and apps running on them,” an official said.

Prasad asked the IT secretaries of the States to continuously monitor the traffic on websites and said every State should set up a sufficiently strong security system and data centres.

“The Centre will, from time to time, also send officials for audit of sensitive centres such as nuclear power stations, financial hubs and IT hubs, where a lot of sensitive data is handled,” sources said. It was also discussed at the conclave.

Prasad told mediapersons that the conclave discussed cyber security issues and Aadhaar, which are important to advance the ‘Digital India’ mission.

“We discussed artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies, as they are important for the expansion of the ‘Digital India’ programme,” he said.

The Minister was informed 14 crore people are yet to enroll for Aadhar, especially in the North-Eastern States and iin Jammu & Kashmir, and among children in the 0-5 years age group.

The government will send mobile machines to these States to step up enrollment.

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