‘G20 Digital Economy Mins’ meet reaches consensus on treating cyber security as global problem’

Bengaluru: Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday said there was a consensus during the G20 Digital Economy Ministers’ Meeting that cyber security is an international problem that requires collaboration and steps for building trust and respect for other economies.

The minister, who holds the Electronics, IT, Communications and Railways portfolios, said there was absolute consensus in the G20 meeting on the concept and application of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), cyber security and skilling in handling digital technology.

Elaborating on the discussions on cyber security, he said some “very good principles” were achieved in terms of cyber security.

“It was clearly agreed and understood by everybody that cyber security or information security or digital security, whatever we call it, different countries call it with different names...this is something which is an international problem and we must collaborate,” Vaishnaw said in a press briefing here.

He further said, “We must take steps throughout the world to make sure that there is an overall trust and there is overall respect for other people’s economies, and there is overall deterrence against activities that are threatening somebody’s economy.”

According to him, there was a lot of consensus on cyber security, where everyone agreed that this is a problem that the entire world has to face together.

“This (cyber security) cannot be seen in isolation. On this, some very good principles were decided, achieved and the focus was on creating more awareness and creating more tools which are affordable for the common citizens and small businesses,” the minister said.

There was a lot of emphasis on cyber security for small businesses and MSME sectors, he added.

With regard to cyber security, the minister pointed out the steps taken by the Department of Telecommunications to check cyber fraud.

He said about a few months back, the Government of India had launched three major tools through which cyber frauds can be prevented and asserted that the result of those three tools is “phenomenal”.

With the first tool, five-and-a-half million fraudulently obtained SIM cards from which the cyber frauds were getting carried out were detected and deactivated, Vaishnaw said.