Cybersecurity incidents in India have reportedly spiked due to pandemic-driven practices of working remotely. In response to a parliamentary question, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) revealed that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) observed a total of 6,07,220 cybersecurity incidents in the first half of 2021. In response to a different question on "whether there have been attempts of cyber attacks on critical infrastructure of the country," MeitY did not provide any specific answer. Why it matters? Cyber-attacks have been on the rise for the last few years, especially during the pandemic, and is costing victims huge amounts of money. The figures revealed by CERT-In are a good indicator of the overall cybersecurity situation of the country, and as it stands, the situation is not good. As for attacks on critical infrastructure, the government is not disclosing any details, but multiple security companies have claimed that India's critical infrastructure was targetted by hackers in recent months. Number of incidents continue to rise Last year, CERT-In tracked 11,58,208 cybersecurity incidents. The number from January to June this year is on track to beat last year's number, which was in itself a sharp rise from the 3,94,499 incidents that were tracked in 2019. In April this year, Sophos, a British IT security company reported that about 52% of Indian companies fell victim to a successful cyber attack in the last 12 months. The report says that migration to work-from-home owing to the COVID-19 pandemic posed additional challenges to companies’…
