Cyber Attacks in India: India was ranked among the top Tier 1 i.e. role-modeling countries in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)’s Global Cyber Security Index (GCI) 2024, where India achieved a good score of 98.49 out of 100. On paper, India ranks among the top 10 countries in the world due to taking strict steps on legal, technical and organizational fronts.
On the contrary, according to the World Cyber Crime Index and other global reports, India is also the second largest country in the world to be targeted by cyber criminals. On an average, Indian organizations on the ground face more than 3000 cyber attacks every week.
CBSE portal breached
This ground reality and fundamental shortcomings of India’s digital security were exposed when recently there was a malicious attack on the re-evaluation portal of CBSE. Due to this cyber attack, the payment gateway of the portal was breached and around 50 students got unauthorized access to the system. Due to which a huge discrepancy was seen in the amount of fees on the portal, where the fees per subject started appearing ranging from Rs 1 to Rs 68000.
Earlier, a 19-year-old ethical hacker had also revealed serious flaws like hardcoded master password and weak login system in CBSE’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) portal. Although the board has denied live data leak, after this incident the central government had to immediately deploy experts from IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur to conduct technical audit of the system and strengthen the security. This incident shows how sensitive our important government and academic databases are.
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How advanced are America and European countries?
America and European countries are far ahead of India in terms of strict cyber security rules and use of new technology.
Budget and Advanced Infrastructure: Countries like the US, which ranks first in the GCI, and the UK spend a huge portion of their total IT budget only on cyber security and AI-powered defense systems.
Strict data laws: Europe’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is the world’s strictest data privacy law. There, companies are fined heavily for data leakage, so that they do not compromise on security.
Ground Awareness: Zero-trust security architecture and secure coding are considered essential in western countries, from government departments to small businesses. In contrast, India has enacted laws like the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA), but strict implementation at the ground level is yet to happen.
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