Govt faced surge in cyberattacks in last 2 weeks, but infrastructure resilient: IT ministry additional secretary Abhishek Singh

Powering Bharat Summit

In the two weeks of escalation at the India Pakistan border post the terrorist attack on Pahalgam, Indian government's digital infrastructure faced a wide range of cyber attacks, said Abhishek Singh, additional secretary of IT ministry on May 16.

It is important to note that Singh did not mention the India Pakistan escalation, but emphasised on the 'two week' time frame, which aligns with the timeline of the escalation at the border.

Singh's comments hold significance as he was recently appointed as the new director general of National Informatics Centre (NIC), an autonomous body under the IT ministry that is responsible for digital infrastructure of the government, which includes thousands of websites, applications and so on.

Additionally, while the physical attacks on various locations in India through drones has been well documented, this is also the first time that the government has publicly spoken about the attacks on its digital infrastructure.

"In the last few weeks, we saw an increased attack on the whole (digital) infrastructure. Our teams worked day in and day out to ensure that our infrastructure did not yield. We had no such incidents of anything getting breached. But it required a lot of effort," Singh said at the Network18 Powering Bharat event in New Delhi.

"We are continuing to strengthen that arm. Going forward, all the sovereign functions, all the important states were cybersecurity is involved, such data centres will be maintained by NIC. But all such services which can be handled by private, we will be involving them," Singh added.

Earlier, Moneycontrol exclusively reported that to counter the surge in cyberattacks on Indian digital entities following the Pahalgam terror attack, the Indian government, through the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), has issued special instructions to financial institutions and critical sectors to strengthen their cyber defences.

The government, meanwhile, also engaged with industry bodies such as NASSCOM to coordinate a broader alert mechanism, the source added.

On May 9 and 10, the government's top cybersecurity body issued two advisories, warning businesses across the country of increasing ransomware and other cyberattacks.

Meanwhile at the Powering Bharat event, Singh also said that the government has been leveraging artificial intelligence in its processes.

For instance, Singh informed that the government has hosted Meta’s llama Three on C-DAC’s Rawat computer, and using that, Llama can be used for fine tuning and inferencing government applications.

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