News: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), on January 19, 2018, announced the Cyber Surakshit Bharat initiative in association with National e-Governance Division (NeGD) and industry partners at an inaugural event in Delhi. Shri K J Alphons, Honourable Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology and Tourism (Independent Charge), inaugurated the initiative.
Aims: Cyber Surakshit Bharat aims to conduct a series of training programs in the next six months across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai. The audience will include CISOs and technical officials from; The central government, State governments and Union Territories, Public Sector Banks, Public Sector Units, Defense forces, defense PSUs and technical arms of the Air Force, Army and Navy.
Objectives: Recognizing the need to strengthen the cyber security ecosystem in India, and in alignment with the Honourable Prime Minister’s vision for a ‘Digital India’ the first public private partnership of its kind in India was launched. Conceptualized with the mission to spread awareness about cyber crime and building capacity for safety measures for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and frontline IT staff across all government departments, Cyber Surakshit Bharat will be operated on the three principles of Awareness, Education and Enablement. It will include an awareness program on the importance of cyber security; a series of workshops on best practices and enablement of the officials with cyber security health tool kits to manage and mitigate cyber threats. Cyber Surakshit Bharat is the first public-private partnership of its kind and will leverage the expertise of the IT industry in cyber security.
Partners: The founding partners of the consortium are leading IT companies Microsoft, Intel, WIPRO, Redhat and Dimension Data. Additionally, knowledge partners include Cert-In, NIC, NASSCOM and the FIDO Alliance and premier consultancy firms Deloitte and EY.
Reasons for initiative: According to the Honorable Minister, India is home to over 118 crore Aadhaar accounts, providing people with a unique identity. It have opened 30 crore bank accounts for the poor and underprivileged section of the society and linked those with Aadhaar. So far the Government has transferred subsidies worth 2.40 lakh crore to the Jan Dhan accounts linked with Aaddaar, thereby saving over 60,000 crore, which would earlier go to the middlemen. As India is moving towards that ecosystem, it also must ensure that our systems are protected and our data is secured. Keeping this concern in mind, the government has launched the Cyber Surakshit Bharat, with a primary objective to keep our data safe and protected.
