While these incidents have resulted in awareness and a few remedial steps, they are still seen mainly as questions of commerce and privacy. The fact that today terrorists and organised syndicates use cyberspace for communicating and even launching attacks is still not being taken seriously. The implications of such incidents from a national security point of view are yet to be investigated. The absence of the geographical barrier makes it possible for such crimes to have major impact on our security. One of the biggest usage of the internet by terrorists is for collecting funds. Therefore, banking operations have to be conducted amidst the highest order of security and confidentiality. Likewise, the call records of government functionaries must be protected from hackers.

Globally, the advanced nations have looked at all forms of cyber attacks under something known as the critical information infrastructure protection (CIIP). This CIIP policy is a comprehensive one, where the critical information infrastructures are defined, and measures are taken to deal with all forms of cyber attacks. In India we are yet to have a CIIP policy although issues related to cyberspace are being dealt with more and more. While at the highest level we have the National Information Board (NIB) under the National Security Advisor to look at policy issues relating to cyberspace, there is almost no action from the NIB because it rarely meets. Most efforts are by the ministry of communications & IT through the offices of the Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA) and the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN). CERT-IN has so far been doing a good job by sending the right alerts but nowhere in the government set-up are such advisories understood in their full ramifications.

... contd.