Mechanism for combating growing cyber crimes!

By M.Y.Siddiqui

Union Government in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has strategized further the mechanism of the States/Union Territories (UTs) for combating growing cyber crimes across the country. Despite States/UTs being solely responsible for police and law and order, in the scheme of the Constitution of India, for deployment of adequate infrastructure facilities, state-of-the-art technology, gadgets, manpower and training of police personnel to combat the cyber crimes, the Central Government has been supplementing the initiatives of the States/UTs in tackling the growing menace of cyber crimes through advisories and strengthening the capacity building of their law enforcement agencies. The MHA has setup Indian Cyber Coordination Centre (14C) to deal with all types of cyber crimes in the country well coordinated and comprehensively.

Accordingly, a state-of-the-art National Cyber Forensic Laboratory has been set up as part of the 14C at CyPAD, Dwarka, New Delhi to provide early stage cyber forensic assistance to Investigating Officers of States/UTs police. A massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) platform CyTrain portal has been developed under the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (14C) for capacity building of police/judicial officers through online course on critical aspects of cyber crime investigation, forensic, prosecution and related issues. More than 12,500 police personnel from States/UTs have been registered and 3,050 certificates issued through the portal. A National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (www: cybercrime.gov.in) has been launched as part of the 14C to enable people to report incidents of all types of cyber crimes with a dedicated focus on cyber crimes against women and children. Cyber crimes reported on this portal are converted into FIRs and follow-up action on that is handled by the State/UT law enforcement agencies concerned as by law provided.

In addition, a Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System, under 14C, has been launched for immediate reporting of financial frauds to stop siphoning off funds by the fraudsters. Seven Joint Cyber Coordination Teams have been constituted under 14C covering the whole country based on cyber crime hotspots having multi-jurisdictional power and issues by onboarding States/UTs. MHA has provided assistance under Assistance to States/UTs for Modernisation of Police Scheme, for acquisition of latest weaponry, training gadgets, advanced communication system, forensic equipment, cyber policing equipment and related means. States/UTs formulate their own Action Plans in keeping with their strategic priorities and requirements to combat cyber crimes effectively. MHA has released Rs.1,653.20 crore as Central financial assistance  under the scheme during the last three financial years. Besides, MHA has provided financial assistance of Rs.99.89 crore under the Cyber Crime Protection against Women and Children. So far, financial fraud transactions of more than Rs.570 crore have been saved. A toll free Helpline Number 1930 has been operationalized for assistance in lodging online cyber crime complaints.

Coming to the modus operandi of the cyber crimes and its tackling, 3,500 people were arrested in over 14,000 cyber crime complaints in 2021, the latest official information in the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data as yet available. Number of complaints under the online financial fraud category of the NCRB Reporting Portal from January 2021 to November 30, 2022 is 884,863. Cyber crimes against children rose to 1,376 in 2021 from 1,102 in 2020. NCRB data showed that 52,974 cases of cyber crimes were registered in 2021, an increase of 11.8 percent compared to the previous year. The year 2022 data not released so far. Other vital information relevant to cyber crimes in India reveals 18 percent surge in weekly cyber attacks in January-March 2023 compared to the corresponding period of 2022, with each organization facing 2.108 weekly attacks. Some other information includes 2,328 cyber attacks per day; with average 8,00,000 cyber attacks in a year. There is a cyber attacks every 39 seconds. It is estimated 2023, will face around 33 billion account breaches.

World wide costs of cyber crimes is predicted to hit US$ 8 trillion in 2023 and will grow US$ 10.5 trillion in 2025, according to Cyber Security Ventures’ 2022 Official Cybercrime. It is pointed out that more than 90 percent of all cyber attacks begin with phishing attacks to gain access to protected systems hosts, and networks. There is technology to mitigate phishing attacks and train users to recognize better phishing emails. Human error is responsible for 80 percent data breaches. According to Deloitte, 91 percent of all cyber attacks begin with a phishing email (an email that looks like it is from someone that one knows but is actually from criminals). Ten most common types of cyber attacks are: Malware, Denial-of-Service (DOS) Attacks, Phishing, Spoofing, Identity Based Attacks, Code Injection Attacks, Supply Chain Attacks, Insider Threats, DNS Tunneling, and IoT Based Attacks.

Despite several steps having been taken by the Central government, States and Union Territories to spread public awareness on cyber crimes, like dissemination of messages through SMS, 14C social media accounts, radio campaign, engaged MyGov,  for multi-media publicity, organizing Cyber Safety and Security Awareness weeks in coordination with States/UTs, distribution of Fishing Handbook to Adolescents/Students, there is a growing needs for intensive multi-media and multi-lingual public awareness campaign on a sustained basis to check the ever increasing menace of cyber crimes lest people, mostly innocent and gullible, should be continuing to be duped and suffering with growing ferocity!

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