The government of India plans to release a Cybersecurity Strategy in 2020, Lt Gen. (Dr) Rajesh Pant, the National Cyber Security Coordinator in the National Security Council, in a response to a question from MediaNama. He added that the government had "made a start" on a cybersecurity policy, saying that the present Cybersecurity policy was released in 2013, and a lot has changed in the six years since then. "5G will change the entire scope of cybersecurity in India. There are new aspects like ransomware, and IoT was not there. So with these changes, there is going to be a new strategy for dealing with cybersecurity. We have created a small team and we will write something and we will get comments from people," he said, indicating that there will be a consultation. Pant was speaking at the third launch event of the book Data Sovereignty: The Pursuit of Supremacy by Vinit Goenka, Lt Gen. Vinod Bhatia, Lt Gen. V.M. Patil, Lt Gen. (Dr) D.B. Shekatkar, Lt Gen. Vinod Khandare, Jayadeva Ranade, and Bharat Panchal, on June 21st 2019. Comments by Pant at the book launch During the Q&A, Pant was asked about India's cyber offensive capabilities, and he said that "we have the [offensive] capability, but nobody will talk about it’". Other comments he made at the book launch, some points in response to questions he was asked by the audience, included: 1. On Data Protection issues: On the Data Protection Bill: "… if you read the white paper…
