The Central government is mulling a new strategy to combat criminal activities on the internet, of which child pornography and cyber-terrorism seem to have already proven a handful of Indian investigating agencies.
What has grabbed the attention of the government is the new-age crimes emerging across all the platforms.
Considering the impact of modern-day cybercrimes on various age groups, specifically minors and the youth, the government, under the Cyber Information System (CIS) division, has decided to introduce Cyber Warrior Police Force (CWPF) and the Indian Cyber Crime Co-ordination Centre (ICCCC), which is also known as the I4C.
Both the CWPF and the I4C will serve as catalysts for tracking down the online criminals. The CWPF has been proposed to be raised on lines of Central Armed Police Force (CAPF).
Here are the details:
- The government has decided to hire IT experts from the premier public and private institutions of India, including IITs, to work towards empowering the CIS along with the CWPF and I4C.
- According to a government statement, the CIS division was introduced in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in November 2017.
- The CIS division is to include ethical hackers, web analysts and programmers who will coordinate with officials in different regions of the country and implement ways to report cybercrimes. Setting up a cyber-forensic unit, capacity building of police, and research and development of best practices will be the jobs of the IT experts under CIS.
- The CIS division will involve private players also who will deploy various techniques which will further cater to the development of response tools in tracing and tracking a culprit on the web.
- The CIS division will be headed by two director-level officers. Each of the four units will be assigned a dedicated task which includes reporting of cybercrimes, followed by internet security clearance to the reports, guidelines on cybersecurity and NIS (national information security).
- In a meeting which was held to discuss an action plan over the addition of CWPF and I4C in CIS, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh was informed by police officials that the website "ips.gov.in" is updated with all the relevant details and can be accessed by Indian Police Services (IPS) officials, CNN-News18 reported.
- Rajnath was briefed by the police officials over the process of Annual Performance Appraisal Report (APAR), the filing of Immovable Property Returns (IPRs) and updating of Executive Record (ER) sheets — which the police officials said are updated on the official IPS portal.
- Rajnath on January 17, 2018, announced the formation of four new units in the CIS division namely — Security Clearance, Cyber Crime Prevention, Cyber Security and Information Security Wings.
- As per the latest numbers, there are over 40 crore netizens — including individual users and organised syndicates — in India who are vulnerable to cybercrimes.
- Referring to the increase in cybercrimes in Asia, a government statement read: "As Asia continues to play a key role in the global economic market, these cyber threats are expected to increase," and hence it is likely that the CIS reinforces the cyber investigating agencies in India.
