NCSC floats G20 Delhi declaration on preventing cybercrime incidents

National Cyber Security Coordinator Rajesh Pant on Monday proposed "Delhi Declarations" for G20 nations to promote cyber peace and cooperation to prevent, mitigate and investigate cyber incidents in cyberspace.

While speaking at the B20 Conference on Cyber Security organised by CII, Pant cited various G20 action plans around cyberspace and said that the G20 supports the existing UN cybersecurity norms.

"I want to propose today something that I'm calling the Delhi Declaration," Pant said.

He said that the G20 encourages states to adopt norms of responsible state behaviour in cyberspace and Delhi Declarations comprises four to five norms that have already been accepted by the UN and the open ended working groups.

"We commit to protect, not damage critical infrastructure or other essential and peaceful systems from cyber-related or enabled means, commit to cooperate to prevent, mitigate and investigate cyber incidents, and other malicious activities in cyberspace. In particular, when it comes to ransomware," Pant said while reading excerpts of the proposed Delhi Declarations.

"Commit to protect and not disturb the software supply chain and finally, commit to respect international law and the rule of law in cyberspace and commit to protecting the humanitarian sector. There is also a longer-term plan that has been made to help support the implementation of the framework. This is what I bring to the table," Pant said.

He also said that it is necessary to have governance structures in place, and the people have to be trained on cyber hygiene, which involves standard operating procedures for various actions, cyber crisis management plans, audits etc.

"Technology will involve everything, which is today being discussed as part of zero trust architecture. So, right from the endpoint, the identity and access management to the network security to data security to cloud and to applications, everything will have to be catered for," Pant said.