Twenty-two-year-old Anjali Sakhre, a management graduate and a part-time employee with a call centre from Bhopal, was arrested recently for securing bank account details of her friends, acquaintances and various other people, and sharing the data with Ajay Raj, a cyber-criminal based in Bihar. The fraudster accessed those accounts to plunder the money. Anjali would make a commission of Rs 8,000-10,000 for each account.

In most cases, she should open a bank account for her acquaintances using their ID documents under the alibi that she needed a bank account to receive a scholarship or for trading purpose and that she could not use her account because of tax liabilities. Anjali would use Ajay’s mobile number at the time of opening the account. This would give the fraudster easy online access to the accounts.

With the advancement of technology, there is an increasing threat to violation of data privacy – be it for national security or for individual finances. The cybersecurity space in India has come a long way since the country’s first efforts at securing cyberspace. The year 2020 saw a large number of data breaches with the total count of cyberattacks reaching a historical high of 15 million in India between January and February 2021.

From compromising the emails of many government officials by breaking into the two-factor authentication to around 1 million credit card data leaks during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic – an alarm bell was sounded aloud, questioning the cyber laws of the land. The lockdowns did not deter the cybercriminals and around 27 million adults were attacked in India with identity theft. The list of cybercrimes is not limited to the identity theft alone, it goes on with attacks on personal finances, data breaches, card detail leaks, swim swaps, ransomware, sextortion, and so on.

While Anjali’s case was a classic instance of cyber fraud where the victims physically handed over their ID documents to her based on trust, there are thousands of cyber-attacks where the victims have no clue of the data breach as they transact online. According to Rajesh Pant, National Cyber Security Coordinator, there are 375 cyber-attacks in India every day.

The pandemic-induced lockdowns and the consequent trend of working from home unleashed great opportunity for cyber pirates. Workplaces are usually secured with smart protection technologies to thwart cyber-attacks and phishing campaigns but home setups, which work on wireless routers or broadband networks or mobile hotspots, are weak in terms of encryption. This made employees vulnerable to cyber-attacks and, in turn, challenge the security of organisations.

The hacking of the Cosmos Bank server and wiping off a whopping Rs 94.42 crore from bank accounts, leaking of millions of Aadhaar data, malware attack on Union Bank of India, and more show how organisations have been affected.

The National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) and CERT have been prompt to act against the rising threat. Their efforts pushed India to the tenth spot in the global cybersecurity index. CERT alerts over 700 organisations to ensure strict cyber threat prevention. The renewed push by the governments to protect individuals and organisations is expected to create around 3.5 million cyber security jobs globally by 2025.

***

Global Cybersecurity Index Ranking India at 10, China at 33, Pakistan at 79

Cybersecurity Awareness 52% adult Indians clueless about how to protect themselves from cyber-crime

Malwares in India 4 lakh every day Cyber-attacks in India 375 every day

Cyber-attacks in India

• India was the second-most targeted country in the Asia-Pacific region, with a 7% share in such incidents globally
• India logged in 53,117 cases in 2017 alone. More attacks are anticipated in 2021 across sectors
• Nearly 700,000 cyber-attacks were reported across India as of August 2020