1.55 million cyber security incidents in 2019, 2020: Govt tells Lok Sabha

Over 15.5 lakh cyber security incidents have been reported in the last two years and 11.58 lakh of them were recorded in 2020 alone, the Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday.

Union Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy said the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) is serving as the national agency for responding to cyber security incidents in accordance with the provisions of Section 70B of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

According to the information reported to and tracked by the CERT-In, 3,94,499 and 11,58,208 cyber security incidents were observed during 2019 and 2020, respectively, he said in a written reply to a question.

Reddy said the CERT-In receives inputs from its situational awareness systems and threat intelligence sources about malware infections in networks of entities across sectors.

Whenever any incident comes to the notice of CERT-In, it issues alerts and advisories to the entities concerned and sectoral Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) for remedial measures, he said.