India witnessed more than 27,000 cyber security threat incidents in the first half of 2017, according to Minister of State for Electronics and IT P P Chaudhary’s reply in Rajya Sabha. Threats reported include phishing attacks, website intrusions and defacements or damages to data as well as ransomware attacks, the minister's reply added. "As per the information reported to and tracked by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In)," the number of cyber security incidents reported were: 2014: 44,679 2015: 49,455 2016: 50,362 2017 (till June): 27,482 CERT-In is an emergency response team set up under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for dealing with a range of cyber-attacks. Apart from this, the Government of India has four Sectoral Computer Emergency Response Teams to address Cyber Security Threats in Power Systems: Transmission, Thermal, Hydro and Distribution. Chaudhary’s revelations in the Rajya Sabha comes at a time when an increasing number of Cyber attacks and data leaks have been reported in the country. Authorities including the telecom regulator TRAI are also noticing the threat posed by mobile applications that collect sensitive user data. While India’s top court is looking at whether privacy should be a fundamental right—both offline and online--which will affect how companies handle user data in India. Cybersecurity issues in India Here is a list of cyber security incidents that affected India in the past one year. Mirai botnet malware: A botnet malware named Mirai took over the Internet targeting home router users and other IoT based devices. The malware affected…
