The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) received and tracked as many as 12.67 lakh cyber attack incidents this year by November 2022, said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in the Parliament on December 14, 2022. Gradual increase in cyber attacks: During the winter session, MP Manish Tiwari asked the government whether the number of cyber attacks in India had increased over the last five years. Accordingly, CERT-In data showed that cyber attacks had increased from 41,378 attacks in 2017 to 14,02,809 attacks in 2021. However, this number appears to have decreased somewhat in 2022 where 12,67,564 attacks were reported until November. “According to the analysis by CERT-In, the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the computers from where the attacks appear to have originated from a number of countries,” said MeitY in response to queries about the origin of these attacks. Not Centre’s duty to tackle cyber attacks: In another set of questions, MPs D.M. Kathir Anand, Dr. T. Sumathy, Thamizhachi, Thangapandian and Anurag Sharma asked the Centre whether the cyber police has adequate techno/research facilities to combat and curb cyber attacks on government websites. However, to this MeitY said that the responsibility of tackling cybercrime lies primarily with sate governments and state police. “The state government is responsible to equip their police forces with adequate techno/research facilities, state-of-art technology gadgets and training for cyber policing. The central government supplements the initiatives of the state governments through various advisories and schemes for capacity building…
