As India moves towards growing digitisation of the economy against the backdrop of rising cyber crime, the Centre has decided to create a National Cyber Investigation Agency to combat cyber crime attack in the country. The agency will have a pan India jurisdiction. The agency will be in the lines of the National Investigative Agency (NIA) to combat terror in the country. NIA acts as the central counter terrorism law enforcement agency.
According to sources, the setting up of a federal agency has been proposed recently, and it will focus on prevention and management of cyber incidents. The cyber agency will take the lead in three different response areas-threat response, asset response, and intelligence support.
Top sources said that as per the proposal, the cyber indents would be dealt with by the federal agency, but before that all the States have to first revamp their cyber units. According to MHA data, more than 700 Government websites have been hacked in the last four years and over 1.44 lakh cyber attacks have been recorded in the last three years.
As per proposal, the unit will comprise of specially trained cyber squads to protect computer intrusions, theft of intellectual property and personal information, child pornography and exploitation, and online fraud and gather intelligence and track terrorists online activities. The teams will possess advanced training in computer languages, forensic investigations, and malware analysis. The team will have permission to chase criminals around the world and seek other countries help in assistance of the computer intrusion cases.
The idea of setting up the federal agency came after the Govt realised that cyber intrusions are becoming more commonplace, dangerous, and sophisticated. These computer intrusion cases -- counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal-- need to be dealt with top priorities. Even PM during DGP and IGP’s three-day annual function directed all the State police, security and investigating agencies heads to revamp their cyber units in their force with use of best the skills and resources. Records with the NCB show that between 2013 and 2015, reported cyber crime cases doubled-from 5,693 to 11,592.