3.94 lakh cybersecurity incidents reported to CERT-In in 2019: Dhotre

Nearly 3.94 lakh cybersecurity incidents were reported in 2019 as per information tracked by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

"Cyber space is a complex environment of people, software, hardware and services on the internet. Due to vulnerabilities in software, lack of awareness among people and evolving processes, there are possibilities of increased cybersecurity incidents," Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Sanjay Dhotre said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.

According to the information reported to and tracked by CERT-In, 49,455 cybersecurity incidents were reported in 2015, 50,362 (in 2016), 53,117 (2017), 2,08,456 (2018) and 3,94,499 (2019), he added.

"In tune with the dynamic nature of information technology and emerging cyber threats, continuous efforts are required to be made by owners to protect networks by way of hardening and deploying appropriate security controls," he said adding that the government has taken a slew of measures to enhance the cybersecurity safeguards and prevent cyber attacks.

Measures include audit of government websites and applications, formulation of a crisis management plan for countering cyber attacks, and the launch of botnet cleaning and malware analysis centre 'Cyber Swachhta Kendra'.

To another question, Dhotre said that as per the information tracked by CERT-In, 54 websites of central ministries, departments and state governments were hacked in 2019, against 110 sites in 2018.