What IT ministry's new draft roadmaps for cybersecurity in critical sectors say

Additionally, under cyber forensics, the government intends to develop forensics tools for social media, dark web, pornography, deep fakes and the like. The MeitY has invited public comments on the draft roadmaps till February 15

A few days ago, the IT ministry released draft roadmaps for five sectors — mobile security, internet of things (IoT) security, cyber forensics, quantum technologies and cryptography. These roadmap documents list the staggered targets that the government wants to achieve from 2024 to 2047.

A quick look at these drafts shows that the government is massively pushing for achieving indigenisation in the IoT, mobile security and cryptography ecosystem. In the quantum technologies roadmap, the government ultimately wants to develop standards for quantum computing devices.

Additionally, under cyber forensics, the government intends to develop forensics tools for social media, dark web, pornography, deep fakes and the like.

With these targets in mind, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has initiated a public consultation on the draft roadmaps and is inviting comments till February 15. Let’s take a look at these drafts in detail.

What does India’s cyber forensics roadmap say?

The major target that the government has set for itself, and which it aims to develop by 2030, are social media analytics tools, forensics tools to investigate sectors like social media, dark web, pornography, deepfakes, databases, vehicles, cryptocurrency, UPI apps and 5G/6G devices.

Additionally, emphasis is being laid on developing tools that can analyse and reconstruct events from CCTV footage, and develop additional forensic tools for drones, ransomware and cloud.

Also read: Deepfakes: Stricter IT rules coming soon for social media platforms, says Rajeev Chandrasekhar

The long-term goals (2024-2047) that the ministry has in mind include developing forensics that can detect and analyse child exploitation, analyse attacks on private/protected/encrypted data and so on.

Additionally, the government also wants to develop forensics for critical sectors such as power, banking, transportation, healthcare and telecom.

What does the mobile security roadmap say?

By 2047, the government wants to develop an indigenous secure mobile stack for wearables, personal assistants and embedded systems, apart from developing a “self-defending security” ecosystem and deploying “quantum-backed security” for mobile systems.

However, MeitY has also listed multiple targets for 2030. For instance, by the end of this year, the government wants to develop an ecosystem to mitigate against common citizen-centric threats and attacks, develop a government-level framework to verify the authenticity of applications, etc.

By 2025, the government also wants to “build a trust ecosystem between various stakeholders based on blockchain” and “harness the strength of indigenously developed hardware initiatives to benefit the mobile ecosystem”.

What is India’s proposed national IoT security roadmap?

Like the vision document for mobile security, the government’s ultimate aim for IoT is to develop an indigenous security ecosystem for the technology; develop AI-powered self-adapting IoT security, to name a few, by 2047.

Between 2024 and 2047, the governments will develop an IoT sandbox, take up IoT network security orchestration and automation, collaborate with IoT security working groups for constantly updating policies regarding IoT security, etc.

By 2026, the government wants to develop an IoT device lifecycle certificate system, and by 2028, “self-aware IoT protocols and its security”.

What is the roadmap for developing quantum technologies in India?

To boost quantum technologies in India, the government wants to immediately start developing new materials, develop proprietary algorithms, hardware and accelerators.

Also read: Govt to place Rs 10,000 crore supercomputing hub plan before Cabinet soon: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

From 2023 till 2028, the government wants to work on developing superconducting materials, authentication and encryption services, standardisation for quantum cryptographic devices, and so on.

From 2023 till 2034, MeitY has proposed that it will concentrate on research and development to develop quantum computers, quantum sensing and metrology, quantum communications, etc.

What is India’s cryptography roadmap?

The government wants to immediately start working on developing fast, secure and efficient block/stream ciphers and formal proofs for such block/stream ciphers, among other things.

Block cipher treats plain text as one block to convert into cipher text, while stream cipher translates each letter/symbol directly into cipher text.

From 2024-2034, the ministry has proposed working on developing quantum-resistant cryptography, novel non-linearity schemes for cryptography, quantum-safe public key infrastructure and post-quantum cryptography. Additionally, the government also wants to work on the indigenisation of cryptographic solutions in that period.