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Growing Threat of Cyber Warfare

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March 08, 2018

What is the issue? 

  • Cyber-space has emerged as a potential arena for international confrontations. 
  • Countries like China are already working on expanding their cyber capabilities and India too much start enhancing its cyber-defence capabilities.

How serious is cyber threat?

  • The U.S. Defence Science Board, in a recent report had cautioned that the U.S. cyber defence capabilities were not up to the mark.  
  • It additionally noted that the next decade is bound to witness massive additional deployment of cyber offence capabilities by many nations.
  • As these observations are coming from one of the most potent countries in cyber space currently, the enormity of the challenge is only implicit.
  • Significantly, India is consciously and speedily making a serious foray into digital space.
  • India's vulnerabilities are only bound to grow exponentially.
  • A 2017 study found that India ranked 4th in online security breaches.
  • India also accounted for over 5% of global threat detections.

What are the various cyber threats?

  • Cyber threats can manifest in many ways.
  • The most visible are cyber crimes, cyber theft, cyber espionage, cyber intrusions etc.
  • These are relatively low-end threats.
  • Criminal hackers can certainly cause data breaches and even financial loss.
  • Countering such large scale threats is important.
  • The real danger lies in targeted cyber attacks coming from adversarial nation states that carry out strategically planned and sophisticated cyber attacks.
  • “Stuxnet Attack”, which damaged the Iranian nuclear centrifuge facility, is thought to be a cooridated operation of the governments of U.S. and Israel.
  • Cyber tools are slowly becoming a regular part of the arsenal of nations.
  • Hence, it is essentail to be aware of future cyber-wars and take precauitionary measures.

What is required?

  • The three main components of any national strategy to counter cyber threats are defence, deterrence and exploitation.
  • Defence - For the defence of critical cyber infrastructure,  National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) was established.
  • While this is a positive, it now needs to partner individual ministries and private companies.
  • It should put procedures in place to honestly report breaches.
  • However, there are limits to defensive strategies in the cyber domain as the field is highly condusive for offensive capabilities.
  • Therefore, cyber deterrence and exploitation have become important, although they are complex and not completely understood now.

What are the challenges?

  • Nuclear deterrence works because there is clarity on the destructive potential.
  • But this is not the case with cyber warfare.
  • Notably, cyber capabilities of an adversary is not all that apparent.
  • This is because unlike nuclear arsenal, there are no missiles to be counted.
  • Besides these, identifying the time of the start of the attack and tracking the origins of the attack are also complex tasks.
  • For these reasons, deterrence in cyber domain cannot operate in isolation.
  • It thus needs the support of economic and diplomatic domains as well.  

What are the structures that need to be created?

  • Militaristic View - The most serious cyber attacks are when an external state threatens the national security of India by exploiting the cyberspace.
  • The danger cannot be countered by an intelligence agency like the NTRO or a research organisation like the DRDO.
  • The lead agency to deal with this will have to be the defence services.
  • This has to gather intelligence, evaluate targets and prepare cyber attack plans.
  • Also, cyber operations cannot be a standalone activity.
  • It has to be integrated with land, sea and air operations, as a part of information warfare.
  • Defence Cyber Agency - India is one of the few countries which still do not have a dedicated cyber Command in its military.
  • While the setting up of a Defence Cyber Agency has been announced, the effort looks lacklustre and half hearted.
  • It is important for a dedicated cyber agency to have significant autonomy.
  • It should have an expanded mandate on its own to erect a strong cyber arsenal.

 

Source: Indian Express

 

Quick Facts

National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO)

  • NTRO was set up in 2004.
  • It is a technical intelligence agency under the National Security Advisor (NSA).
  • It falls directly under the Prime Minister's Office.
  • It also includes National Institute of Cryptology Research and Development (NICRD) within its ambit.
  • It works for developing technological capabilities in various fields.
  • It acts as a super-feeder agency for providing technical intelligence to other intelligence agencies on internal and external security.

 

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