National Cyber Security (NCS) Coordinator Lieutenant General Rajesh Pant while inaugurating the Cyber-security Centre of Excellence on 28 January 2020, mentioned that that India has over 600 million Internet users and is the most cyber-attacked country in the world. Lieutenant General Rajesh Pant was inaugurating the Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence (CCoE), a joint initiative of Government of Telangana and Data Security Council of India (DSCI) at Manjeera Trinity Corporate in Hyderabad, Telangana on Tuesday, which happens to be the Data Privacy Day too.
The center being the first in the country, will be the prelude to such centers atleate one per Indian State. The centre at Hyderabad will aim at creating a strong ecosystem for cybersecurity and privacy. The center will also have facility to conduct training for the industry, government departments, academia and others. The facility is also equipped with a 30-seater incubation zone. The centre also has an ‘Experience Zone’ to facilitate live sessions and product demos for cybersecurity.
The inauguration also witnessed the signing of partnerships with CtrlS, UTC, Unify, Zoho, IIT Hyderabad, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Huntmetrics, Mahindra École Centrale, International Institute for Advanced Aerospace Technologies, JNTU and National Payments Corporation of India. The facility is also striving to engage more women in the cybsersecurity space through its Women Cybsersecurity Forum initiative.
At the inauguration Lieutenant General Rajesh Pant said “The being used by a large number of people, who may not be well-educated and therefore vulnerable to cyber-attacks by hackers. The mobile phones were involved in 90% of cyber crime and that digital forensics for mobiles have become an important area”. He also added “If it is something like WhatsApp, there is an end-to-end encryption and you cannot get information. So, this is a big area where crimes are taking place. But, the number of cases of solving crime is low”.
On incidents of facial recognition software being used in the State through the prism of consent, he said that Personal Data Protection Bill seeks to bring about safeguards, and will define sensitive and critical data. CCTV cameras have been instrumental in solving crimes. Touching upon the ‘ongoing’ debate between security and privacy, and the Disha case, he said, “What happened in Hyderabad would not have been solved without CCTV cameras. Whether the bill comes or not, that is besides the point. Security is more important.”