India's armed forces are setting up a dedicated agency to fight cyber attacks

• The new entity will be an inter-services agency, not purely Army
  
• The agency will have units or cells with dedicated officers looking at cyber security
  
• Globally, India saw the second highest number of data breaches
  

The three wings of the Indian defence—the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy—are coming together to set up a separate agency to protect against cyber threats.

"It will be an inter-services agency, not purely Army, functioning under the integrated defence staff (IDS) and they will be looking after all the threats in the cyber domain," news agencies quoting Lieutenant General MM Naravane, the general officer commanding the Eastern Command, said.

The IDS is responsible for fostering coordination and enabling prioritisation across the different branches of the Indian Armed Forces.

"There will be units or cells or dedicated officers at every headquarter to deal with the aspect of cyber security," Naravane added.

With the meteoric rise in use of technology and innovation, cyber security has assumed prominence in public debate. Time and again, hackers, activists, and rogue agents who are state-sponsored or otherwise have managed to bring critical infrastructure to a standstill.

Cyber warfare has increasingly become a front for many international conflicts as well.

The US Navy defense contractors and subcontractors, for instance, have reportedly suffered "more than a handful" of disconcerting security breaches at the hands of alleged Chinese hackers over the past year and a half. In one incident, failure to encrypt classified flash drives and the lack of physical locks on critical computer servers left the US vulnerable to deadly missile attacks, according to an NBC report late last year.

India saw over 695,000 cyber attacks between January and June last year with most hackers originating from Russia, the US, and China, said a study from cyber security firm F-secure.

944 data breaches that led to 3.2 billion data records being compromised worldwide in the first half of 2018, according to a report by digital security firm Gemalto.

With agency inputs


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