A total of 50 websites belonging to India's central government and state governments were hacked in 2022 and there were 8 data breach incidents connected to government organisations in the same year, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said in response to a parliamentary question posed by MP Binoy Viswam on February 3. "There have been attempts from time to time to launch cyber-attacks on Indian cyberspace from both outside and within the country. It has been observed that such attacks compromised computer systems located in different parts of the world and use masquerading techniques and hidden servers to hide the identity of actual systems from which the attacks are launched," the Minister added. No update on National Cybersecurity Policy: Indian government institutions are vulnerable to cyberattacks because there is no dedicated cybersecurity policy targeted at protecting them. The National Cyber Security Policy has been in the making for years now with the government not giving any timelines for the same. Interestingly, the IT Ministry on February 3 also responded to a question about the policy, merely stating that "the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) has formulated a draft National Cyber Security Strategy, which holistically looks at addressing the issues of security of national cyberspace." The response, once again, doesn't discuss the current status of the policy or any timelines. Why does this matter: Government institutions serve as the backbone for many critical functions and they contain the data of hundreds of millions of citizens. A cyberattack can not only bring these critical…
