“Curiosity is a natural human trait”. The curiosity in people for viewing the personal information and intruding into people’s lives has led to increase in cyber-crime. The risks of cyber-crime are very real and too threatening to be ignored. The advanced nature of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) has fuelled rapid digitization in every aspect of human lives, making the life easy. On the other hand, it has made the lives more prone to cyber-attacks. As the government is taking initiatives towards cash to cashless economy, the benefits from this are exponential and so are the risks. The chances of security breach regarding sensitive information of ever increasing population is one of the major concerns for the government.
Cybercrime is no longer confined to sci-fi thriller movies, but a tangible potential risk to both national and international financial markets. The focus on cyber security has therefore increased with growing penetration of internet and information technology. Cyber-security is a technology or process designed to protect any information system against criminal or unauthorized use of electronic data. Intrusion has really become easier with access to internet and IT technology. For instance, a person with in-depth knowledge can sweep an entire bank account within seconds by using a computer. The era of digitization has led to increase in dependency of financial transaction in the banking sector and other financial institutions on information technology, which is a major propelling factor for cybersecurity.
Recent statistics show that cyber-attacks have increased tremendously in the past few years. All the major sectors such as healthcare (38.9%), Government/military (9.9%), Education (10.7%), Banking/credit financial (5.3%) and Business sector (35.1%) of economy are threatened by cyber-attacks in a way or two. Moreover, these threats cannot be confined by territorial borders, as cross border cyber-attacks have become normal affairs. The past few years have witnessed some of the biggest cyber-attacks. Equifax, the largest credit bureau data base was penetrated by cybercriminals and 145 million account information was compromised. However, as the law enforcement over the internet is feeble, cyber security has become a major challenge even for the government in several cases including the hacking of government website. The security of last databases such as Aadhaar must not be targeted. Attacks on such databases will be a question on the entire digital infrastructure or government. Though the ‘e’ revolution or electronic revolution has begun, the security and privacy of information should be ensured to justify smarter e-governance.
The first and foremost step to ensure the secured cyber system is to learn and spread awareness about the technology. The cyber security can be optimised to provide more efficient and reliable IT infrastructure. The ever revolving nature of security risks such as network security, application security, mobile security, cloud security, and database security are the biggest challenges in this domain. The traditional framework of cybersecurity was limited to perimeter security, which involves protection for most valuable components and defend against known threats. The increase in unauthorized and unknown threats made the traditional framework insufficient. A new assessment framework that recommends adoption of continuous monitoring and real time assessment was issued by National Institute of Science Standard. The adoption of such data focused strategy will definitely help provide better cybersecurity.
The exposure to virtual world by adoption of information technology in every aspect has definitely simplified and shrank the world. It has given significant power in the fingers of person in front of the screen, however, it has adverse effect in terms of cybersecurity. “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.” This quote elucidates both sides of the same coin.