Shri Sachin Pilot, the Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology informed Lok Sabha today in a written reply to a question that virus is a ‘malacious code’ computer software programme. With the innovation of technology ‘malicious code’ are getting highly sophisticated and complex. Due to proliferation of Information Technology (IT) in all areas worldwide, there is rise in the virus attacks and malicious activities. With the rise in the number of computers and increase in the broadband connections the same trends are observed in India as well. The reply further stated that the government has circulated Computer Security Guidelines and Cyber Security Policy to all the Ministries/Department on taking steps to prevent, detect and mitigate cyber attacks. National Informatics Centre (NIC) managing government websites and providing e-mail services is implementing these guidelines and policy to secure the government IT infrastructure from the cyber attacks. The specific steps taken by the government in creating awareness among computer users are:
- Department of Information Technology (DIT) has launched Information Security Education and Awareness (ISEA) Project to introduce courses on information security at the under graduate and post graduate levels and impart training to system administrators and government officials on information security. One of the objectives of the project is to widely generate information security awareness to children, home users and non-IT professionals in a planned manner. A total of 300 workshops have been organized at various levels to increase awareness on information security. Specific book, videos and online materials is developed for children, parents and general users about information security.
1. Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) is spreading awareness among users on the spread of computer virus and safeguafding from such attacks through issuance of advisories and guidelines. A web portal “Secure your PC” has also been provided to general users by CERT-In for dissemination of information on securing their computer system from cyber attacks. CERT-In on its website (www.cert-in.org.in) has provided links to anti-virus scanners to dis-infect the computer systems from virus and malicious code.