If cybercriminals in the world have a nation their GDP would be the third largest economy with $8 trillion, the third only after the US and China, pushing other big economies such as Japan, Germany and India to other slots.
In a bid to curb cyber crimes, organisations and law-enforcing agencies across the world are investing heavily to put proper defence mechanisms in place. Both these efforts, so far, are happening in isolation and lack synergies allowing the cyber criminals to have a field day.
For the first time in the country, Cyberabad Police, who take care of the security of nearly half of Hyderabad including the IT hubs, have joined hands with the IT industry and others in the ecosystem to establish a Law Enforcement CISO (Chief Information Security Officers) Council.
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Modelled success
The council was modelled after a similar, successful initiative called the Society for Cyberabad Security Council (SCSC), which works for the coordination between the IT industry and police to ensure hassle-free logistics and security of the industry.
“We would like to go after cybercriminals who are resorting to ransomware and other cyber crimes,” Stephen Ravindra, Cyberabad Police Commissioner, said, while formally launching the council.
SCSC Secretary Ramesh Kaza said that the public-private partnership will establish the LE CISO Council, which will be run by a team, with representatives from the IT industry, the government and the police, who will share information seamlessly to keep tabs on the cybercriminals.
“The Council will develop standardised incident response frameworks and procedures to ensure effective response. It will also develop, collate and publish tools and technologies to help organisations in securing their digital assets,” he said.
Collaborative defence
“With a 300 per cent surge in cyber incidents over the past year, we need to defend our digital space, government organisations, critical infrastructure, and industry including vulnerable MSMEs,” Raveendra said.
“Every cybersecurity breach has an element of criminality in it and every cyber attack has an element of cybercrime in it,” he said.
With the establishment of the council, the police want to reduce the attack surface, enhance resilience and generate real-time threat intelligence.
The council will promote baseline security hygiene (configuration checklists and guidelines), a cyber academy, an SOC (standard operations centre for proactive hunting) and security audits.
While the CISOs will help the law-enforcement agencies with information and security frameworks, the police will help CISOs gain investigative expertise.
