Cyberattacks are at a new high in the ongoing tech era. Key ministries in the Government have been fortified by the Centre but this time in the digital way. The Central Government has provided key ministries such as Railway, Home Ministry, Defence, Aviation and others with a secure e-mail network. This e-mail network line will be next to impossible to crack or hack and helps to keep privileged information private.
The e-mail system that works on Zero Trust Authentication (ZTA) has been designed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC). Recently, senior officials of the Union Home Ministry held a meeting to discuss the provisions of the secure e-mail set-up.
“User name and passwords are not enough; now a two-factor authentication has been activated. Other than passwords, facial recognition or biometrics is required. The log-in and log-out times are recorded and monitored,” the official said.
Have there been any such cyberattacks?
The measures to strengthen cybersecurity come in the wake of multiple cyberattack attempts to target critical installations and government websites such as the November 23, 2022 cyberattack at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the national capital. The attack crippled the servers and e-hospital services at the country’s premier public healthcare for more than a month.
However, in February this year, Digital India Corporation (DIC), a not-for-profit company set up by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), invited bids from private players to select cloud service provider to “oper-ate, manage, and migrate existing projects as well as future projects.”
The DIC is currently working on various projects of national importance such as Digilocker, Poshan Tracker etc. The scope of the bid also included migrating the e-mail services of government employees to a private player, currently handled by the NIC.
Though the government did not make any an-nouncements, the Hindustan Times reported on September 12 that the government has selected Chennai-based business solutions provider Zoho to handle the email services. There are over 33 lakh Central government employees.
Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Minister of State, Mel-TY, while responding to a question said 165 data breach incidents involving citizen data were observed from January 2018 till October 2023. The NIC has also developed and implemented e-office with government offices being encouraged to go fully digital.
Can AI help to prevent such cyberattacks?
The answer remains, Yes. Artificial Intelligence can be handy whilst fighting the cyberattacks. By basing algorithms on understanding and recognising patterns from enormous piles of data, companies can create a system that can identify unusual behaviour and anomalies.
By using data analysis and this algorithm, AI can identify spam and phishing emails by taking into account the message content and context when looking for anomalies and warning signals. By analysing trillions of DNS queries to better understand where the bad actors hide, machine learning (ML) and AI can protect companies from these types of attacks.
DNS poisoning is done when an attacker intercepts a DNS request and sends a fabricated (poisoned) response to the client. This is an acute problem facing businesses as there are more than 30,000 DNS poisoning attacks daily and 70% of all cyber attacks involve the DNS layer.
However, GOI is not considering AI to tackle this technical problem instead have opted to appoint a private tech-company called Zoho to provide such services. Although there are rumours that with the recent solid performances in AI sector and huge declarations; the Government of India might shift to AI if the risk of cyberattack remain persistent.
What is causing such cyberattacks?
According to reports weak passwords and open addresses causes such hackers intervene with the digital functioning of any organisation. People to tend to apply their e-mail IDs at many risky websites for whatever reasons and the hackers pick the IDs from there.
The hackers always tend to hack such prestigious and famous institutions where they can receive maximum traction and their conditions (if any) are fulfilled within a whisker.
