BHUBANESWAR : Alarmed over rising cyber crimes, the Odisha government has decided to set up a special Cyber Safety Wing (CSW) headed by an IG and a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in the State.
The government has planned two layers of institutional intervention. While Cyber Crime and Economic Offences (CC&EO) police stations have been planned at district level, the CSW and CoE will come up at the State level.
Of the proposed 28 cyber police stations with permanent executive component and hired domain experts including cyber forensics and IT experts, it has been decided to set up one specialised police station each in 13 undivided districts in the first phase. Four cyber police stations are currently functioning at Rourkela, Sambalpur, Berhampur and Bhubaneswar.
A senior Home department official said the CSW headed by a DIG or an IG rank officer having permanent executive component as well as professionals will come up within the State Crime Branch to monitor institutional response, prepare plans and execute policy interventions.
“The cyber police stations will function under the wing which will have a cyber crime resource centre to provide forensic support for investigating the crimes. It will coordinate with the computer emergency response team of India (Cert-IN) and other agencies,” he said. Plans are also afoot to constitute an experts panel with representatives from RBI, leading banks, IIT, IIIT, NIT, telecom services, prosecution and judiciary to collaborate with each other under one umbrella for a coordinated response to cyber crime.
Though the State Police Headquarters had proposed to set up a Society for Research and Collaboration on Cyber Safety and Security on the lines of Karnataka, the official said, since the situation of Karnataka is different from Odisha, the panel with a pool of experts and resources will suggest remedial measures for fighting the menace of cyber crime and ensure safe cyber space.
As one of the reasons for increasing cyber crimes is lack of awareness among the public, an extensive IEC campaign will be conducted across the State with the content to be developed by the police with help from various stakeholders and the experts panel.
The State has recorded a sharp 31 pc rise in cyber crimes in a year as 1931 cases were registered last year as compared to 1475 cases in 2019, 867 in 2018 and 824 in 2017. As many as 5640 cyber petitions were received in 2020 as against 2558 in 2019 and 1673 in 2018.