Separate law, budget needed for cyber security: DCA head

Rear Admiral Mohit Gupta, head of the newly created Defence Cyber Agency (DCA), said on Thursday that the country needs a separate law, budgetary allocation and a task force to tackle cyber crime at the national level.

He also informed that a cyber security strategy for the country was in the works.

Awareness should be created for cyber security and it should be part of school curriculum too, he said.

DCA is a newly-created tri-service command of the Armed Forces for handling cyber security threats.

Speaking at a program at the Military Institute of Technology here, Gupta said the existing Information Technology Act does not have adequate provisions for cyber security.

"The IT Act was passed in 2008 and there is a serious need to modify it. Some countries have separate cyber security laws and a few others have cyber security by-laws embedded in their IT Acts," he said.

"So according to me there should be a dedicated Cyber Security Act," he added.

There should also be a dedicated budgetary allocation for cyber security and a "cyber crime task force", he said.

"The government should allocate at least 10 per cent of the IT budget for cyber security," he added.

The DCA head was delivering a keynote address for a capsule course on 'Science Technology and Applied Research' at the institute.

A cyber security strategy for the country was being prepared, he said.

Unlike the previous policy of 2013, which was released by the IT ministry, the new policy would be released by the Prime Minister's Office, which indicates that there is a realisation that cyber security is not the domain of a single ministry, Gupta said.