Cooperative societies, including banks across the country, can now look towards a comprehensive Cyber-Security Framework developed by the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) to secure their operations from crooks lurking in the cyber world.
The Framework titled “Cyber-security and IT Guidelines for User Interaction” outlines the minimum requirements that the cooperatives will need to follow in developing and implementing strategies, policies, procedures and related activities aimed at mitigating the risks of cyber threats and attacks, said Sundeep Nayak, MD, NCDC.
Former national cyber security coordinator, Dr Gulshan Rai, the brain behind the guidelines shared key features of the document saying that it has four levels detailing systems and structures that need to be set up in an organization; steps to be taken to secure and protect the system / IT assets among others.
The move to develop a cyber-security framework comes close on the heels of the Centre’s decision to computerize all Primary Agricultural Credit Societies(PACS) across the country and link them with District Central Cooperative Banks, State Apex Cooperative Banks and NABARD to make them e-friendly. However, this will not be easy. India is among the top 10 countries facing cyber-attacks and in the recent past, cooperative societies too have found their database breached by cyber predators.
Currently, there are about 65,000 PACs which the Centre plans to increase to more than 3 lakh in the next five years to realize the vision of making the country Atmanirbhar or self-reliant. Also, there are 8.55 lakh registered cooperatives, 8.5 lakh credit cooperative societies and 7 lakh non-credit cooperative societies and over 17 national cooperatives across India.
At the meeting held in hybrid mode under the Cooperative Institutions Cybersecurity Advisory Forum (CICAF) of the NCDC on November 8, Rai further said that the safety of data should be priority for any organization to be digitally safe and secure.
“The Framework takes proper care in this regard as it also provides for measures which lead to configuration of the IT assets to prevent cyber threats, detect and recover from cyber threats. Also, baseline risk-based monitoring of the ICT system has also been envisaged,” Dr Rai said as he informed that there has been increasing cases of cyber attacks across the sectors, with at least 15 such instances reported in last three years itself. Many have gone unreported, said Dr Rai.
“The Framework is not a one-size-fits-all approach for all critical organizations in the sector as each one’s risk is unique. Rather, it aims to improve an organization’s cybersecurity risk management as well as those without an existing cybersecurity program can use it as a reference when establishing one ,” Nayak told the participants at the meeting which included cyber security head and representatives of the cooperative banks from States like Kerala, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh besides NAFED, KRIBHCO and NCDC officials among other IT experts from the sector.
Former Union Fertilizer Secretary and senior advisor to NCDC, Dr. Chhabilendra Roul termed the NCDC move ‘a good beginning’ in bringing the Framework since cyber predators are always ahead of the IT developers, while Dr Rajeev Ranjan, former Union Fisheries Secretary and currently senior advisor to NCDC emphasized on “ensuring adequate infrastructure to the smaller cooperatives and business who without a significant IT or information security budget could struggle to ensure a web security.”
Dileep Sanghani, President, National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI) called for training, guidance and capacity building as a need of the hour besides creating awareness like holding webinars among the stakeholders particularly smaller cooperatives, on the other hand Prasun Kumar Das, Secretary General, Asia-Pacific Rural and Agricultural Credit Association (APRACA), emphasized on having crystal clear policies, ecosystem auditing of all the areas in the sector as well as providing incentives to the players.
