Cyber Surakshit Bharat: A Novel Step To Empower The Cyber Security Posture Of India

AS INDIA GOES more digital, the cyber security initiative is a landmark initiative

- Sandhya Michu

Setting up of CyberSurakshit Bharat(CSB) by the Ministryof Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), in association with National e-Governance Division (NeGD) and industry partners, have been welcomed by the Indian CISOs community. It is the first public-private partnership of its kind and will leverage the expertise of the IT industry in cyber security. To begin with five-six IT companies have come forward for some big role such as Microsoft, Intel, Wipro, Redhat and Dimension Data to bring the best experts to help train and create capability to deal with the latest cyber security challenges. It is targeted at CISOs and technical officials from the central government, state governments and union territories, public sector banks, public sector units and defense forces, defense PSUs and technical arms of the Air Force, Army and Navy.

With increasing importance of identifying roles of the CIOs and CISOs in both government and private institutions, government has taken various steps to strengthen the role of CISO as it is possibly a challenging role in any organization. Today, most of the ministries have put CISOs in place in themselves, organizations, various departments, financial sectors, in telecom and many key areas and trying to put in all efforts to equip them, give them the tools, organizational strength to perform their goals better.

MeitY had earlier issued a directive to all central government ministries to appoint a Chief Security Officer (CSO) to ensure cyber safety, in addition to issuing an RFP to all empanelled auditors to conduct a cybersecurity audit for government departments.