Cyber attacks can derail India from projected growth: Report

New Delhi: Cyber attacks in India can adversely impact India's growth and worsen relations with its neighbours, a joint Assocham PwC report said.

"Cyberattacks can deliver economic blows, derail India from its projected growth trajectory and worsen relations with our neighbours, unleashing a state of anarchy," the report released recently said.

Citing rise in digital payments and projected growth of India's digital economy to USD 1 trillion in next 5-7 years from USD 270 billion at present, the report said that the growth is opening up gaps which can be exploited by the adversaries.

"The number of incidents reported by the Indian Computer Emergency Response (CERT-In) was 27,482 till June 2017. Cyber adversaries are becoming more sophisticated and resourceful...Among more than 100 countries that were hit by WannaCry, India was the third worst affected," the report said.

The joint report has recommended government to increase focus on critical infrastructure in the country, collaborative effort from business organisations, training people even at school level and creation of indigenous tools for building secure and cyber-resilient environment in the country.

The report has suggested that government should encourage and enforce Internet service providers to provide clean Internet to citizens, which is devoid of any computer virus, botnet or distributed denial of service (DDoS) malwares.