Steps Taken to Deal with Cyber Crime and Cyber Security

• The Government has launched the online cybercrime reporting portal, www.cybercrime.gov.in to enable complainants to report complaints pertaining to Child Pornography/Child Sexual Abuse Material, rape/gang rape imageries or sexually explicit content. 
• The Central Government has rolled out a scheme for establishment of Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) to handle issues related to cybercrime in the country in a comprehensive and coordinated manner.
• Establishment of National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) for protection of critical information infrastructure in the country.
• All organizations providing digital services have been mandated to report cyber security incidents to CERT-In expeditiously.
• Cyber Swachhta Kendra (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre) has been launched for providing detection of malicious programmes and free tools to remove such programmes.
• Formulation of Crisis Management Plan for countering cyber attacks and cyber terrorism.
• Conducting regular training programmes for network / system administrators and Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) of Government and critical sector organisations regarding securing the IT infrastructure and mitigating cyber attacks.

Why in News?

• The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has written to all States to examine and register First Information Reports (FIRs) based on the complaints received on National Cybercrime Reporting Portal- www.cybercrime.gov.in.
• As per data available with the Ministry, only 2.5% of total complaints registered on the portal are converted into FIRs.
• Through the portal, MHA also aims to raise a group of “cybercrime volunteers” to flag unlawful content on the Internet.

About the portal

• The www.cybercrime.gov.in portal was launched on August 30, 2019 to help people report all kinds of cybercrimes on a centralised platform. 
• The portal has a section for cyber crimes committed against women and children like child pornography, sexual abuse among others. The other section deals with cyber crimes like financial fraud or hacking among others.
• An earlier version of the portal launched in September 2018 on the directions of the Supreme Court, catered only to complaints of child pornography, sexual harassment crimes against women and children. 

Rising numbers

• According to data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the number of registered cybercrimes increased by 63.5% in the year 2019 compared to the previous year.
• A total of 44,546 cases were registered under cybercrimes compared to 27,248 cases in 2018. In 2019, 60.4% of cybercrime cases registered were for the motive of fraud (26,891 out of 44,546 cases) followed by sexual exploitation with 5.1% (2,266 cases) and causing disrepute with 4.2% (1,874 cases).

Reference:

1. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/mha-tells-states-to-register-more-firs-for-cyber-crime/article32997209.ece