NTRO: Increase in Cyber Attacks due to work from home

On April 29, 2020, the National Technical Research Organization has reported that the number of cyber attacks in the country has increased due to the work from home scenario. According to the report, the critical sectors may fall prey to inimical forces to relax geofencing restrictions that are granted to employees.

Highlights

The report says that many sectors including public enterprises, government undertakings, banking, power, telecom, transport, energy are susceptible to attacks. This has occurred mainly because several companies had relaxed their geofencing restrictions in order to allow their employees to work from home.

What is the issue?

Several cyber criminals have gone to an extent of impersonating officials from health organizations and other government enterprises, seek donations through malicious e-mail attachments.

Government Actions

In order to reduce this, the Ministry of Home Affairs has instructed the firms in the country to track all CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) activities in their IdAM (Identity and Access Management). Also, the ministry has asked the firms to stay resilient against ransomware attacks.

National Technical Research Organization

The NTRO was set up in 2004. It is a technical intelligence agency that acts under the National Security Advisor of India in the Prime Minister Office. There are controversies that the NTRO is not yet completely functional. It requires more than 98 million USD to make the organization completely equipped.

Month: Current Affairs - April, 2020