India is increasingly coming under the lens of hackers and as many as 641 Twitter accounts, e-mails and government websites were compromised in the last five years, revealed the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur told the Lok Sabha on Tuesday that the Ministry has tracked a total number of 175, 114, 61, 77, 186 and 28 websites, emails and social media accounts which were hacked during the year 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 (upto February) respectively.
CERT Response
Responding to a query regarding the measures taken by the government, the minister said that whenever a compromise takes place, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) notifies the affected entities along with remedial actions to be taken.
"CERT-In coordinates incident response measures with affected entities, service providers, sectoral Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) as well as Law Enforcement Agencies," the Minister told Lok Sabha in a written reply.
Thakur said the government has taken several measures to enhance the cyber security posture and prevent cyber-attacks.
"CERT-In issues alerts and advisories regarding the latest cyber threats and countermeasures on a regular basis to ensure safe usage of digital technologies. It has issued 68 advisories for organisations and users for data security and mitigating fraudulent activities," the Minister informed the House.
He said that all the government websites and applications are audited with respect to cyber security prior to their hosting. The auditing is also conducted on a regular basis post-hosting.
