Skip to main content

Govt to audit banking tech to check cyber crime

By
In a bid to tackle cybercrime, the central government is planning to review the Information Technology Act.
A technology infrastructure audit of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), for possible holes that could be exploited by cyber criminals, is also on the government's action plan.
The government, which plans to strengthen the computer emergency response team or CERT-In with ethical hackers who would respond to cyberattacks across the country, has directed digital payment agencies to report to CERT-in if any unusual activity is discovered on their platforms.
The IT ministry has approved setting up of CERTs in 5 states and creating 26 new posts in CERT-In.
"All digital payments agencies have been asked to report to CERT-In any unusual activity on their platforms. We are taking several measures to ensure a resilient system. We will audit the IT infrastructure of NPCI and have formed crack teams at CERT-In for immediate response," Union Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
"CITOs (chief IT officers) have been appointed in every ministry and government department. We are undertaking a massive programme to create awareness among the administrative machinery," the minister added.
Separately, the government is engaging ethical hackers to prevent breaches, technology the news portal Factordaily reported on Wednesday.
The move by the government comes in the wake of claims by Legion, a cyber criminal gang, which says it has found flaws in India's banking infrastructure that could potentially lead to breaches and having email dumps of parliamentarians from sansad.nic.in, the email service hosted by the National Informatics Centre, the government's technology arm.
The government's push for legal backing is also due to the lack of provisions to compensate consumers if they lose money due to a cyber breach on wallets.
The IT ministry has already formed a small group of officials under Secretary Aruna Sundararajan.
“The Act came into being in 2000. It has, by and large, served us well. Now, as we move towards a digital economy, we are reviewing if there is a need to relook at its architecture, to make it more deterrent for cyber criminals,” Prasad said. The government has formed two teams in CERT-In, one to respond to cyber-attacks and the other to monitor digital payments, which has, in the past one month, seen a 1,000 per cent surge. The ministry has till date issued eight advisories on usage of different types of digital payments.
Business Standard New Delhi,15th December 2016

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Household debt up, but India still lags emerging-market economies: RBI

By
  Although household debt in India is rising, driven by increased borrowing from the financial sector, it remains lower than in other emerging-market economies (EMEs), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in its Financial Stability Report. It added that non-housing retail loans, largely taken for consumption, accounted for 55 per cent of total household debt.As of December 2024, India’s household debt-to-gross domestic product ratio stood at 41.9 per cent. “...Non-housing retail loans, which are mostly used for consumption purposes, formed 54.9 per cent of total household debt as of March 2025 and 25.7 per cent of disposable income as of March 2024. Moreover, the share of these loans has been growing consistently over the years, and their growth has outpaced that of both housing loans and agriculture and business loans,” the RBI said in its report.Housing loans, by contrast, made up 29 per cent of household debt, and their growth has remained steady. However, disaggregated data sho...
Post a Comment
Read more

External spillovers likely to hit India's financial system: RBI report

By
  While India’s growth remains insulated from global headwinds mainly due to buoyant domestic demand, the domestic financial system could, however, be impacted by external spillovers, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in its half yearly Financial Stability Report published on Monday.Furthermore, the rising global trade disputes and intensifying geopolitical hostilities could negatively impact the domestic growth outlook and reduce the demand for bank credit, which has decelerated sharply. “Moreover, it could also lead to increased risk aversion among investors and further corrections in domestic equity markets, which despite the recent correction, remain at the high end of their historical range,” the report said.It noted that there is some build-up of stress, primarily in financial markets, on account of global spillovers, which is reflected in the marginal rise in the financial system stress indicator, an indicator of the stress level in the financial system, compared to its p...
Post a Comment
Read more

Retail inflation cools to a six-year low of 2.82% in May on moderating food prices

By
  New Delhi: Retail inflation in India cooled to its lowest level in over six years in May, helped by a sharp moderation in food prices, according to provisional government data released Thursday.Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based inflation eased to 2.82% year-on-year, down from 3.16% in April and 4.8% in May last year, data from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) showed. This marks the fourth consecutive month of sub-4% inflation, the longest such streak in at least five years.The data comes just days after the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Monetary Policy Committee cut the repo rate by 50 basis points to 5.5%, its third straight cut and a cumulative reduction of 100 basis points since the easing cycle began in February. The move signals a possible pivot from inflation control to supporting growth.Food inflation came in at just 0.99% in May, down from 1.78% in April and a sharp decline from 8.69% a year ago.A Mint poll of 15 economists had projected CPI ...
Post a Comment
Read more