Government launches Cyber Swachhta Kendra in New Delhi

The Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has launched Cyber Swachhta Kendra in New Delhi for Botnet cleaning and Malware analysis.
It was launched by Union Minister of Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad as part of Union Government’s ambitious digital India initiative to create a secure cyber space by detecting botnet infections.
Besides, minister also launched some cyber security tools. They are

• USB Pratirodh: It is a desktop security solution to protect from USB mass storage device threats.
• AppSamvid: It is a desktop solution to protect systems by allowing installation of genuine applications through white listing. It helps in preventing threats from malicious applications.
• M-Kavach: It is an indigenously developed mobile application to address the security threats in mobiles.

About Cyber Swachhta Kendra

• The centre mission is to create a secure cyber space by detecting botnet infections in India and to notify, enable cleaning and securing systems of end users so as to prevent further infections.
• It is being operated by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) under provisions of Section 70B of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000.
• The centre complies with the objectives of the National Cyber Security Policy, 2013 which aims at creating a secure cyber eco-system in the country.
• It operates in close coordination and collaboration with Internet Service Providers (ISPs), academia, banks and Product and Antivirus companies.

Botnet: It is a network of private computers infected with malicious software and controlled as a group without the owners’ knowledge. Such infected computer is referred to as a zombie. It is used to steal data, send spam. Botnet is a combination of the words robot and network.The popular attacks that happen these days using botnets are called the Distributed Detail of Service (DDOS) attacks.
Malware: It is malicious software which is specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain authorized access to a computer system. It is an umbrella term used to refer to a variety of forms of hostile or intrusive malicious softwares including computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, ransomware, adware, scareware etc.

Month: Current Affairs - February, 2017