Srinagar: The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Tuesday informed that the number of cyber crimes was increasing due to the enhanced use of cyberspace.
The MHA informed that the latest report published by NCRB in 2021 has revealed that the cases registered under cyber crimes (involving communication devices as medium/target) in the states and UTs were primarily responsible for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of crimes including cyber financial crimes.
“The Central Government supplements the initiatives of the State Governments through advisories and schemes for the capacity building of their Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs),” the MHA has informed.
The MHA further stated that the Central Government has taken various steps to strengthen the mechanism to deal with cyber crimes including cyber crime against critical infrastructure in a comprehensive and coordinated manner.
“The MHA has set up the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) to deal with all types of cyber crime in the country, in a coordinated and comprehensive manner,” the MHA said.
It further stated that the state of the art National Cyber Forensic Laboratory has been established, as a part of the I4C, at New Delhi to provide early stage cyber forensic assistance to Investigating Officers (IOs) of State or UT Police.
The MHA stated that the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (www.cybercrime.gov.in) has been launched, as a part of the I4C, to enable the public to report incidents pertaining to all types of cyber crimes, with special focus on cyber crimes against women and children.
“The Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System, under I4C, has been launched for immediate reporting of financial frauds and to stop siphoning off funds by the fraudsters,” the MHA informed, adding that financial fraud transactions amounting to more than Rs. 265 Crore have been saved so far.
“Seven Joint Cyber Coordination Teams have been constituted under I4C covering the whole country based upon cyber crime hotspots and areas having multi jurisdictional issues by on boarding States and UTs to enhance the coordination framework among the LEAs of the States or UTs,” the MHA said.
The MHA informed that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has been designated as the national agency for responding to cyber security incidents and government websites and applications are audited with respect to cyber security and compliance with the Government of India Guidelines for Websites prior to their hosting.