Amidst rising cyberattacks in India, the ministry said that government agencies were formulating crisis management plans, holding mock drills, and continuously monitoring cyber threats. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) revealed in response to a parliamentary question that it has allocated 416 crores this year toward strengthing the nation's cybersecurity. The answer was given in response to questions posed by BJP Lok Sabha MPs Arjun Lal Meena and Sunil Kumar Singh. Although this is up from the 310 crores allocated in the financial year 2020-2021 and the 162 crores allocated in 2019-2020, it is still only about 4 per cent of the total budget allocated to the ministry. Why it matters? Cyberattacks have been rampantly increasing over the last two years. The government revealed yesterday that over 6 lakh cybersecurity incidents were observed by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) in the first half of this year. There have been multiple reports claiming that critical infrastructure was targetted in recent months. The measures put in place by the government and the budget allocated by it toward cybersecurity could play a critical role in improving the nation's cyber defences. Measures taken by government to improve cybersecurity In three separate parliamentary responses (response 1, response 2, response 3), MeitY said that the following measures have been put in place to enhance the cybersecurity situation and prevent cyberattacks: Continuous monitoring by CERT-In: CERT-In has in place a 24 x 7 cybersecurity incident response mechanism and issues alerts and advisories regarding the…
