How effectively is the Indian government dealing with cyber crime?

The term 'cybercrime' is actually non-existent in any law or legislation in India although the phenomena itself is widely recognized for what it is - any crime that is committed using a computer system. To deal with such crimes, the Indian Penal Code 1860 is good enough and other legislations are considered adequate as to date.

Measures Have Been Taken

Considering India's reputation as the leading hub of offshore IT services, not much was done to improve the situation with respect to cyber crimes. However, the government of the day has taken e-governance quite seriously in order to reach out to the population more easily and deliver services more effectively. It has also undertaken robust measures to safeguard the Indian cyberspace on which e-governance depends.

According to the Union IT and Communications Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, the government has taken a slew of measures to tackle cyber-security violations and cybercrimes in the country. A total number of 23, 254, 552, 1,237, 2,565, 8,266, 10,315, 13,301, 22,060, 71,780 and 96,383 security incidents including phishing, scanning, spam, malicious code, website intrusions etc. were reported to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) during the years 2004 to September 2014, respectively. During the years 2009 to September 2014 a total no. of 11,831, 20,701, 21,699, 27,605, 28,481 and 14,151 Indian websites were also hacked by various hacker groups spread across the world.

Initiation of ISEA

Prasad further informed that the government has also initiated ISEA (Information Security Education and Awareness) project with the aim to develop human resource in the area of Information Security at various levels. Phase-I of the programme has been completed. All central government ministries or departments and state or Union Territory governments have been advised to conduct security auditing of entire Information Technology infrastructure.

All the new government websites and applications are to be audited with respect to cyber-security prior to their hosting. All the ministries/departments of central government and state governments have been asked to implement the crisis management plan to counter cyber-attacks and cyber-terrorism.