Cyber Security

Mobile telephony and the Internet are considered as the most important discoveries of the 20th century. These have transformed the many aspects of modern life. At present, there are over 3 billion mobile connections and one billion internet connections world wide and the number of users are still growing on. With over 113 million websites globally, people from all walk of life are now eager to improve their quality of life further.

No doubt, the internet has come up to the expectations of improving the quality of life of the people but still full potential of Internet has not yet been realized. Main reason is the lack of trust of its users in the internet. It has been observed that almost two third of the internet users have refrained from certain activities on line on account of security concerns. Greatest fear among the users were the theft of personal information like identity theft, credit card fraud, computer viruses and spy ware etc. and therefore, entrusting of confidence among the users of internet is one of the key enablers for its future growth and uses.

The growth of internet has inherently opened new vistas of opportunities for the criminal who exploits the online vulnerabilities to commit cyber crimes and inflict serious damage to the critical infrastructures of the nations. Viruses, Identity theft, Denial of Service attacks, Spy ware and Phising etc. have become the dangers of cyberspace. These are the main hurdle for the future growth of internet and its use. It is said, that the span and other exploitations are accounting for the majority (90%) e-mail traffic over internet thereby, clogging internet channels for the genuine users.

Security is the key to the users trust in e-business, e-governance and other on-line applications. The cyber-security covers the range of threat of the internet users broadly in the three areas of concerns- namely threat to individual users by inflicting with virus and identity theft, secondly threat to business, government and other organizations through exploitation of the vulnerability in their data and thirdly threat to the critical public infrastructures like Telecommunication Network, Financial systems, emergency systems, Power Grid Systems etc.

The internet has become an inseparable part of our society and culture. It is difficult to imagine the life without it. Therefore, the telecommunication and information technology network which are the prime infrastructure for building the information society needs to be build up with proper robustness to ensure the reliability of services against the attack from the cyber criminals. Span has now taken the form of severe risks to the internet security – sometimes, it gives a lot of annoyance and sometimes it becomes a serious cyber security threat. It has been observed that nine out of ten emails are considered spam. Its Volume as well its proportion are also increasing with the growth of Internet. As per the observations made by United States Federal Trade Commission, genuine e-mails out of the average seventy numbers of e-mails, received by the employee everyday, are only around 9, rests are the spam. Spam in its various forms only drains the resources. The direct cost is in the form of incorporating spam filter software and hiring of engineers to deal with the problems. It reduces the productivity of the employees and thereby increases business costs. Most of the users uses at least 5 to 10 minutes a day dealing with the spam. Of course about 2% of the users uses more than half an hour a day dealing with the spam. The spammers are developing new techniques in response to any-spam software. They are always one step ahead. New variants like spim (Spam through instant messaging) and spit (spam associated with internet telephony) has also become now common in the network. Cyber security with evolving technology is becoming more and more complex. It has really become one of the important challenges to all concerned to tackle the threats to cyber security. Further, internets with its gradual shift to social networking is now moving from the Centre of network towards the edges- less centralized control with more user centric activity and a greater user generated content. Laws alone cannot make the telecom network more secure. Computer related crimes can better be prohibited when the makers of the computers, equipments and technologists build more secure and robust systems and the users, service providers etc. operates in more responsible manner. Therefore, it becomes the responsibility of each user to become aware of threat as well as opportunities of Internet.

Government and the Internet Service Provider must help the users to educate them and also to provide them necessary information on how best to protect themselves by developing the culture of cyber securities.

Therefore, a coordinated multi-layered approach is needed to protect the telecommunications and information network. In order to inculcate trust in he ICT network, there is need to rely on multiple line of defenses like national and international strategies, public and private efforts besides bilateral and multilateral cooperation. National agencies and other stake holders are now shaping policies from different prospective namely addressing cyber security as a technical and operational network issues; economic issues, legislation and enforcement issues like cyber crime and the fourth the national security issues as the possible threat of critical information infrastructures protections (CIIP).

Threat to cyber security is constantly evolving with the evolution of newer and newer technologies and therefore, policy relating to cyber security have to be flexible and adoptive. Unless effective steps are taken by all the stake holders including service providers, government and the users, cyber crime eco systems would flourish to inflict maximum damage to the public which are now becoming more and more dependent on information technology in the upcoming digital world. The possible negative impacts of the vicious triangle of spyware, virus and spasm are to be understood and the remedial actions are to be taken for the protection of the information society. It will be difficult to fathom the consequences of cyber war which anti social element may try to inflict on the nations. With more and more dependence on computers and its network, perhaps, cyber war can bring about more harm to a nation than any other form of war. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that its citizens are protected by inculcating a culture of cyber security. The government has a vital role in coordination and implementation on national cyber security strategy to protect its critical information infrastructures. In depth understanding of various aspects of information & communication network/technology can only equip one to take necessary measures for effective cyber security and therefore, the involvement of experts of this field has become equally important for the design of national security strategy.