INDIAN CYBER ARMY

In 2004, India established Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) to defend India from cyber-attack because in 2004, 33 cybercrimes were reported in India and therefore CERT was formed. But still in the period from 2004 to 2011 cybersecurity breaches cases started to increase exponentially from 33 to 13,301 cases. Therefore, in 2011 a new division, the National Critical Information Infrastructure Production Centre (NCIIPC) was formed in India. But still, the formation of this new division had no effect as on 12^th July 2012 there was one high profile cyber attack in which around 12,000 e-mail accounts were hacked of which the IDs included were of Indian officials working in the PMO, defence, external affairs, finance ministries, as well as intelligence agencies. The attack has been blamed on state actors, based in countries inimical to India’s interest.

          On October 2012 under the guidance of India’s former NSA Shivshankar Menon, India made an analysis which resulted in the need of 4 lakh 70 thousand cybersecurity experts to boost cybersecurity in India and this was not good news for Indian software powerhouse & IT’s reputation. In Feb 2013, IT secretary J. Satyanarayana said that NCIIPC will now focus on domestic security solutions and reducing foreign technology exposure. Also, to stop cyberattacks a national security coordinator will be appointed.

        

  Currently, in India, there is a group of ethical hackers who are known as the Indian Cyber Army and this group is India’s only representative National Volunteer organisation that provides its service to the Indian government, National agencies and National Police. This organisation was established under the Proprietorship act in 2011. And in 2016, under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 got transformed into a Not for Profit organisation. Its main aim is to protect the Nation and community from unethical hacking and cyber fraud. It also organises various programmes on how to protect ourselves from cyber warfare. Though this agency is not an official cyber army of India still it helps to protect India from cyber warfare and provides many services.

     To date, China is the only country to declare a cyber army of their country as a different event. But now, the Indian military is also ready to form a cyber army in which 1000 people of IT the department would be a part of it. And those 1000 persons would be then given to the Indian Army, Navy and Airforce. A special cyber academy would be established for the selected 1000 people whose main aim would be to protect and keep safe the information related to Indian Defence and it would also be used during cyber warfare. India Army Chief Bipin Rawat said that all the terrorist organisations would use this cyberspace in the wrong way because due to this even after being miles away they can transfer information from one place to another very easily with just one click and therefore we should be ahead of them in the cyber warfare otherwise we would never be able to solve problems regarding terrorists.