Cyber-crime on high alert; Maharashtra all set to form its own emergency cyber response team

Mumbai, February 20: No need to worry the next time if someone’s bank account is hacked or data stolen from Aadhaar card, help may be more close at hand. The Maharashtra state government is planning to set up its own Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) in the next six months to deal with all kinds of cyber security incidents and cybercrime investigations.

 

The team will help prevent cyber-attacks on corporates and critical government infrastructure and will also help ease the effects. Apart from this the government is also setting up a big data analytics centre (DAC) to analyse threats in real time and establish intelligence sharing platform. The project is likely to cost the state exchequer Rs1,000 crore.

At the present moment, CERT-In is the only national nodal agency being run by the central government for responding to computer security incidents as and when they occur. It was in the year 2015 when Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had announced the CERT-Maharashtra project.

The cyber security project has four verticals that include forensics and investigation, setting up CERT-Maharashtra, big data analytics and capacity building that include research and development. The state’s home department has formed a cyber-police station in every district for forensics and investigation. The CERT will also coordinate with clean pipe services which, in case of a cyber attack, will move the infrastructure of the affected firm to a new system from where it can continue the operations safely.

Though the government has delayed setting up this project but as they say better late than never, the project has been targeted to implement within six months. Compelling to the statistical data of Mumbai pertaining to cyber-crime it was noticed that last year, 1,361 cybercrime cases were registered in Mumbai. The cases include hacking, tampering of sources code, phishing and credit card fraud.