Kochi: The Centre has drawn up a management
plan to meet crisis arising out of cyber attacks, the
Principal Scientific Adviser to the government said on Wednesday.
The plan has been circulated to all ministries, departments
and state governments for their response, Dr R Chidambaram
said in his inaugural address at a Indo-US science and
technology forum workshop on 'Cyber Security -- Challenges and
Response' here.
The government is also considering setting up of centres
for development and certification of critical IT hardware
components, he said.
There are dastardly attacks of the type of 9/11 in New York
and 26/11 in Mumbai. Unlike conventional warfare, a cyber war
by its very nature is a coordinated effort across the globe
and carried out with relative ease and at a ridiculously low
cost, Chidambaram said.
Recognising such a highly plausible eventuality for cyber
war, the US and few other countries have raised a cyber
command structure recently. With ever increasing penetration
of computers, exploding bandwidth and its availability as well
as crashing cost of bandwidth, the challenges from such a
cyber threat has to be met with global technological response,
he said.
Chidambaram said a major advanced facility in Information
Security and Cryptology (AFISC) at Society for Electronics
Transactions and Security (SETS) will be coming up at Chennai
by December this year for which Tamil Nadu Government has
provided land.
The Government has set up a Unique Identification
Authority for providing digital identity to its citizens. The
country is also planning for massive roll out of networks and
infrastructure to support these plans, he said.
He also said the initial phase of the National Knowledge
Network is nearing completion and is planned to expand the
reach of the network rapidly in the next couple of years, he
said.
The workshop was held at the Amrita Institute of Medical
Sciences here.
Bureau Report
First Published: Wednesday, August 19, 2009, 20:54