INTRODUCTION
“A true war is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behaviour, nor restraint men from doing things men have always done” – The Things They Carried.
Final stages of National Cyber Security. Ever since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, our dependence on technology has increased rapidly. From working from home to vaccinating millions of people with vaccines each day (Co-Win Application); from street vendors using digital technology as means of payment (UPI) to Reserve Bank of India plan to implement digital Rupee; usage of facial recognition technology for better enforcement of the law to the storage of data of millions of Aadhar Card owners to another far-reaching move towards digitization was the shift towards government-to-person (G2P) payments or Direct Benefits Transfers (DBTs), India is heavily transitioning its governance by adopting new digitized methods. However, there is no reason to believe that the affordance of digital technology is like Thor’s hammer, which only the pure heart can pick up, and only for a single purpose. Final stages of National Cyber Security.
Given the rapid development of this technology becoming the agent of change, it becomes essential for us to frame laws and protect critical infrastructure that impacts us as individuals, businesses, and countries.
Final stages of National Cyber Security
The pandemic accelerated the acceptance of digital technologies and fast-forwarded the advancement by years. Since digital technologies have boosted growth, expanded opportunities, and improved service deliveries and entrepreneurial development – it becomes vital to safeguard the expansion of financial services and maintain the trust, safety of digitization with proper security frameworks in a functioning democratic society.
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According to the Annual Report of the Reserve Bank of India for FY 2020-21, the number of internet users in India reached a record high of 624 million, with a penetration rate of 45% in January 2021 with a robust 26.1% increase in the total digital payments during the year 2020-21.
The UPI transfers increased to a staggering 217% reflecting widespread adoption of digital channels and astonishing payment methods in comparison to previous years.
These instances necessitate a need to limit the customers’ liability for fraudulent banking transactions. Thus, the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) introduced an online dispute system, an online dispute framework, and a complaint redressal mechanism during the FY 2020-21. The number of cyber-attacks on banking and financial institutions has seen an upward trend, and data theft is becoming rampant. In order to address this, the RBI announced a technology and financial institutions to enforce ‘a common minimum standard’ of security controls through Digital Payment Security Controls (Directions), 2020. The RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das reiterated that a two-pronged approach of upgrading cybersecurity measures, meanwhile, improving financial literacy and awareness, is of utmost importance in India.
The launch of the Jan Dhan-Aadhar-mobile (JAM) trinity has been instrumental in greater inclusion, leading to greater access and empowerment to the banking sector, greater transparency of financial flows, and more robust economic resilience. Thus, ensured by the State under Article 38 of the Indian Constitution would benefit households, communities, our financial systems, and our collective national security.
Cyber Warfare
Cyber operations are, in fact, sometimes an instrument of subversion — an understudied mechanism used in covert operations. Subversion holds great strategic promise but faces an operational trilemma that limits its strategic value. Cyber operations face the same limitations. To assess their strategic value, we thus should not confuse what is theoretically possible with what is practically feasible. Otherwise, the final strategy will be riskier while fighting phantom threats.
In recent times, in the wake of growing cyber-attacks and threats in India, National Cyber Security Coordinator Lt. Gen. Rakesh Pant (retd) stressed the importance of having a requirement of a National Cyber Security Strategy. He stated that a governance structure and a policy with a strategy would be needed in order to tackle upcoming problems in the country. Moreover, there will be about 80 deliverables coming out of this strategy and is expected to serve as a guideline to tackle every aspect including cyber audit, building new indigenous capabilities, data as a national resource, or governance.
Cyber Warfare promises to bring down an enemy from within, stealthily and without using force. Instead, subversion hollows out the adversary’s sources of strength or even turns them against the adversary. It exploits weaknesses in institutions and societies to undermine their integrity and manipulate them. This strategic promise of weakening adversaries without going to war is great but so are subversion’s pitfalls. Actors face significant operational challenges they must overcome to reach their goals.
Subversion holds great strategic promise but faces an operational trilemma that limits its strategic value but it has been noted by the Office of Secretary of Defence, DoD showcases that The People’s Republic of China – PRC’s strategy aims to achieve “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by 2049 to match or surpass U.S. global influence and power, displace U.S. alliances and security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, and revise the international order to be more advantageous to Beijing’s authoritarian system and national interests. This strategy can be characterized as a determined pursuit of far-ranging efforts to expand the PRC’s global influence. In response, India’s National Cyber Security Strategy will need to further set the course for New Delhi’s priorities in the region.
Conclusion
One must understand that the complexity of the information age will not disappear, but strategies have to be managed around the ever-evolving scenarios. Trust and Distrust are both tools that allow us to confront the challenges faced each day. Making it easier for audiences to verify the trust vested in the media might be a sensible step. Transparency and accountability concerning media’s source of capital and highlights existing safeguards in the Budapest Convention on Global Crime (2019), of which India is a signatory. For such transparency to be of use, media and digital literacy must be promoted, and the information must be easily accessible. However, answering distortion with distortive counter-propaganda creates more distortion only and, therefore, precisely the untrustworthy information environment at which fake news is aimed.
In the words of President of the Israel High Court of Justice Aharon Barak, he quipped, “…the strength of society in withstanding its enemies is based on its recognition that it is fighting for values that are worth defending. The rule of law is one of those values.” Thus, law and security do not exclude but complement one another, and neither can stand alone in a functioning democratic society. Ergo, the COVID-19 pandemic has given us a reality check. If we don’t adapt with time, our existence as a democratic nation will be endangered, especially considering our South Asian neighborhood.