PITFALLS OF THE DIGITAL BATTLEGROUND

THE WORLD'S MOST POPULOUS NATION IN 2023 IS ONLINE. DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE, ALONG WITH SMARTPHONES, MOBILE PAYMENTS AND AADHAAR WILL MAKE SERVICES MORE ACCESSIBLE FOR CITIZENS BUT RAISE THEIR VULNERABILITY TO CYBER ATTACKS, DATA THEFT, ONLINE CRIME AND INTERNET SHUTDOWNS

- PRASANTO K. ROY

The cyber attack that took down India's top public hospital toward the end of last year showed us what this nation will have to deal with in 2023: digital crime and warfare both crashing into everyday life, and critical facilities and infrastructure causing more damage than even border clashes and intrusion.

AIIMS was disrupted for over two weeks, slowing to a crawl as it reverted to manual systems. The attackers had not just hacked into major servers and stolen information but also corrupted terabytes of data, including backups.

Cyber attacks on other hospitals and healthcare systems followed-Safdarjung Hospital was reportedly brought down for a day, and the Indian Council of Medical Research faced over 6,000 hacking attempts 'originating from Hong Kong', in 24 hours.

Such attacks are often 'ransomware'-where data, including backups, are scrambled via malware and a ransom is demanded for fixing it. A recent report says 78 per cent of Indian organisations were victims of malware attacks in 2021, and a tenth of them paid a ransom of over a million dollars each to get their data and systems usable again.

AIIMS, for which no ransom was reportedly paid, was a stark lesson in how critical cyber safety is for healthcare, which is not yet among the country's six 'critical information infrastructure' sectors listed for enhanced cyber protection but needs to be. Also urgently needed in 2023: the much-delayed national cybersecurity strategy for India, better coordination among top public cybersecurity agencies, and intensive cyber training for law enforcement.