NEW DELHI: A parliamentary panel has hit out at the government for not doing enough to train people to handle a growing cyber security crisis, reflected in a yawning gap between the number of cases reported and the personnel trained to tackle them. During this financial year, 54,483 cases of cyber violations have been reported to the Indian Computer Response Team (CERT-In). In its report before Parliament last week, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on information and technology said the department of IT should take concrete measures to increase the pool of cyber security experts to tackle the growing threat of cyber security to India’s IT infrastructure.
The panel was not convinced with the government reply that for a population of 1.2 billion, only 42,000 people were trained. It said the government has not given a road map on how to meet its target of training over 1,14,000 people.
The committee, which is led by BJP MP Anurag Thakur, expressed anguish over inadequate funds to deal with the growing threat. “It is disquieting to note from the action taken report of the department that no concrete steps have been taken in this direction (under utilisation of funds and budget cut),” it said.
The panel questioned why the post of the chairman of Cyber Appellate Tribunal (CAT) has been vacant for the past three years.