Law enforcement agencies need to be trained to counter cyber crimes: LG

New Delhi: Lieutenant Governor of Delhi Anil Baijal on Thursday flagged the need for hands-on training of law enforcement agencies and a coherent global strategy to counter the alarming rise in cyber crimes across the world.

Speaking at the two-day conference on 'Homeland Security 2019 – Innovation Led Cyber Crime Management', organised by FICCI jointly with Vivekananda International Foundation, LG said that there is an acute shortage of required skills in the law enforcement officials regarding cyber crime intelligence collection, data analytics, investigating techniques and digital forensics.

"There is a need for more practical, hands-on training which is based on simulated environment. And, given the volumes involved, methodologies should be scalable," he said, adding that cyber crime, which knows no boundaries, needed a coordinated and collaborative approach across various states and different countries.

LG further said that a coherent, collaborative, global strategy is needed for countering transnational crimes like cyber crime. For this, he recommended revision of existing legal framework at national and international levels to adjust to the changing realities including recalibration of instruments like letters rogatory and extradition requests.

Lt Gen (Dr) Rajesh Pant, the National Cyber Security Coordinator in the National Security Council said that the average loss due to cyber crime globally is 2.5 percent of global GDP, which translates to a loss of more than Rs 200,000 crore for India, highlighting the seriousness of the issue.

"While we are presently working under the cyber security policy of 2013, we have already set up a taskforce for creating the National Cyber Security Strategy 2020. In the next two months, we expect to have a draft ready, put it up with the Cabinet in December and come out with a new strategy in January-February," Dr Pant said.

Rahul Chaudhry from FICCI Committee on Homeland Security said, "We can no longer be in a delusion that cyber security threats dwell exclusively in abstract cyberspaces or software. Hardware can be seriously compromised."