Govt may launch national malware repository; to create robust cybersecurity regime

Speaking at a virtual event organised by Microsoft and India Future Foundation, Pant said that the government was also working on a national cyber registry to keep a track of executives who have been trained in various cybersecurity measures and the level to which they have been trained.

“We intend creating a national cyber registry of human resources. The same registry you will find tools and products which have been already indigenously developed so that there is no duplication,” he said.

The registry will also have details of how to contact the said executives who have been trained in various cybersecurity measures and the ways to contact them in cases of emergency. Additionally, it will also feature a knowledge bank, Pant said.

The launch of the national malware repository and the national cyber registry is likely to add to the government’s efforts to create a robust cybersecurity regime for the country, with government bodies such as the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert In) being the apex organisations looking after them.

Earlier in October 2021, Pant had, while speaking at a similar event, said that while there were cybersecurity organisations in the country, there was no central body responsible for safety in online space.

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“By and large, a framework is in place but there is no central apex organisation today in terms of allocation of business rules. There is no ministry or organisation to which you can say you are responsible for the cyber security of the nation. That is the first thing that we have to tackle and that is one of the major deliverables of the strategy,” Pant had then said.

As a part of its efforts to improve cybersecurity discipline and make reporting cybersecurity incidents “a habit”, Cert In had on April 28 this year introduced a set of guidelines for reporting these incidents.

These guidelines required all companies, intermediaries, data centres and government organisations to report any data breach to the government within six hours of the organisation becoming aware of it.

The guidelines had also mandated VPN service providers to maintain all the information they had gathered as part of know-your-customer rules and hand it over to the government as and when required.

While the initial deadline to comply with these guidelines was June 28, the government has now extended it by nearly 3 months to September 25.