Apart from other initiatives in the field of electronics manufacturing and information technology, the Centre on Friday said it is also taking multi-faceted initiatives in cyber security.

Speaking at the Economic Editors’ Conference here, Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that his Ministry has approved 26 new posts in the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) besides planning State CERT-Ins in five States.

He said State CERT-Ins are being planned in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Kerala and Jharkhand.

Sectoral centres

Three sectoral CERT-Ins in the power sector — generation, transmission and distribution — are also being set up in addition to one in the banking sector.

“A national cyber coordination centre is being set up to provide real-time situational awareness and rapid response with ₹985 crore. This project will be completed in five years. Phase-1 is ready to be tendered and expected to be operational by March 2017, while a Botnet Centre will be launched shortly,” Prasad said.

A botnet is a private network of computers that can harm or attack any network with malicious software.

Last month, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) had also decided on setting up a cyber security research and development fund of ₹1,000 crore to be spent over five years.

It was decided that an R&D programme can be operationalised and implemented by the National Security Council Secretariat.

The fund will be sourced from the annual budgets of the Department of Science and Technology, under a separate head.

US election impact

Asked if Donald Trump’s victory would have any impact on the IT sector here, Prasad said that Indian IT companies have created 4.10 lakh jobs and paid around $20 billion taxes in the US from 2011 to 2015.

“This 4.10 lakh (jobs) is a very big number, and over 95 per cent of these are Americans (locals). Indian IT industry investments are to the tune of $2 billion between 2011 and 2013,” Prasad said.

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