36.29 lakh cyber security incidents reported across India in last 3.5 years: Centre

A whopping 36.29 lakh cyber security incidents were observed in the country since 2019 till last month and the government has taken a number of steps to check such designs, Union minister Ajay Kumar Mishra said on Tuesday. "As per information reported to and tracked by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a total of 3,94,499, 11,58,208, 14,02,809 and 67,4021 cyber security incidents were observed during 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 (upto June), respectively," he said in Lok Sabha while replying to a written question.

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The minister said the government has taken a number of measures to enhance the cyber security posture and prevent cyber attacks that include issuing alerts and advisories regarding latest cyber threats and vulnerabilities and counter measures to protect computers and networks on a regular basis. The government is operating an automated cyber threat exchange platform for proactively collecting, analysing and sharing tailored alerts with organisations across sectors for proactive threat mitigation actions by them, he said.

The minister of state for home said the government has issued guidelines for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) regarding their key roles and responsibilities for securing applications and infrastructure and compliance. All the government websites and applications are audited with respect to cyber security prior to their hosting, the auditing of the websites and the applications is conducted on a regular basis after hosting, he said. The government has also empanelled 97 security auditing organisations to support and audit implementation of Information Security Best Practices, he said.

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