Cyber Crimes In India Witness 572% Increase In Last 3 Years! 14 Lakh Cases In 2021 Recorded By Govt

Between 2018 and 2021, there was an over five-fold jump in the number of cybercrime and fraud incidents recorded by the government, as informed by the ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) to a parliamentary panel.

Rise In Cyber Crime

Basically, the number of incidents rose from 208,456 in 2018 to 1,402,809 in 2021, as per the Data available with the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In). 

Indian Computer Emergency Response Team is the government agency for computer security. 

So far, 212,485 such cases have been recorded in the first two months of 2022.

Further, the ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) told the panel, “India has witnessed a significant increase in cases of cyber fraud and various cyber-related incidents in the last three years. A surge in phishing attacks, financial frauds, mail-spams and ransomware attacks were reported during the Covid-19 lockdown, when people mostly worked from home, as attackers impersonated brands and misled employees and customers,” in writing last week. 

How Did This Happen?

Interestingly, this trend coincides with what has been recorded globally.

During this time, remote working has particularly been exploited by cybercrime suspects as people increasingly interact with technology, often with limited cyber hygiene.

How To Combat These Threats?

Considering the rise, the panel sought inputs from the ministry for a mechanism to combat threats, from both state and non-state actors. 

According to the sources, “The main point remains that there is an urgent need to address these growing (cybersecurity) challenges. When will a nodal body be formulated? Who will it be headed by? and will the cabinet secretary take regular assessments? These were among the questions (raised by panel) for which answers were sought,”.

The Union home ministry has trained more than 7,500 police officials to combat some of these problems along with  improving awareness of safe cyber practices.

Apart from this, Meity has rolled out additional factor authentication for government employees to protect their official accounts.

The ministry has informed the panel that the country’s response to such rising cybersecurity incidents has improved, as per an unnamed study.

Further adding, “India was ranked among the top 10 countries out of 193 countries in cyber security posture for the year 2020. India jumped from the 47th position in 2018 to 10th position in 2020,”.