Budget: Special unit of 'cyber commandos' on Home Ministry's 100-day agenda

MHA also working on launching a mobile application called 'Cyberdost' for reporting and alerting users about cybercrimes

A special wing of "cyber commandos", being worked on by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for over a year, has now found mention on its 100-day agenda and may be announced in the upcoming Budget, according to officials in the know.

An official privy to the development told Business Standard that this special wing will have members from the state and union territory police forces as well as central police organisations. These officials will have intensive hands-on training in cyber security and digital forensics.

However, these "cyber commandos" will be different from personnel at cyber police stations and will work with local administration to tackle cyber threats.

At a conference in January last year in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi recommended setting up such a unit. Later, in October, the MHA wrote to states and union territories (UTs) to identify 10 "cyber commandos" and refer them to the ministry.

"The final details of this are being worked out," another official said. "This unit may be announced in the Budget if it is done by then."

The officials added that the ministry is also working on launching a mobile application called "Cyberdost" for reporting and alerting users about cybercrimes.

Currently, the MHA runs a handle on social media platform X with the username @CyberDost to spread awareness about cyber crimes and how to prevent them.

"The ministry thinks it is more suitable to have a separate app for this," one of the officials quoted above said. However, it is not yet clear if the app will be launched for Android, Apple, or both.

The MHA did not respond to a questionnaire sent by Business Standard on these developments.

This comes at a time when India has been witnessing a rising number of cyberattacks of late. According to a recent report by application security firm Indusface, Indian websites saw a massive 261 per cent jump in cyberattacks between January and March this year compared to last year.

It was much higher than a 76 per cent increase globally.

According to Akshay Garkel, partner of Cyber at Grant Thornton Bharat, the state and central law enforcement agencies are well-staffed and equipped with their own cyber cells but the dynamic nature of cyber-attacks requires "continual adaptation".

"In India particularly, a lot of such issues lack adequacy in enforcement. And a special unit will most certainly be a good step towards creating a robust system for incident response," said Shreya Suri, partner at IndusLaw.

DIGITAL THREAT
 

> India most targeted by cyber attacks after the US and the UK

> Recorded 79 mn cyber attacks in 2023
> Finance prime target for cyber attackers

Biggest cyber attacks in last two years
 

Apr 2022: Oil India's Assam facility's IT systems targeted; $7.5 mn demanded 

Nov 2022: 1.3 terabyte (TB) data from AIIMS Delhi encrypted by hackers

Oct 2023: 1.8 TB of 815 mn Indian citizens, including Aadhaar numbers and passport details, sold on the dark web