At a time when databases of other States and Ministries was affected, the Telangana government’s robust Security Operations Centre (SOC) has worked efficiently to protect its own critical databases from breaches, IT Secretary Jayesh Ranjan said.
Mr Ranjan was speaking at the ISACA-organised ‘Cybersecurity Challenges – Redefining Trust’ conference, where he highlighted the government’s key thrust areas in its cyber security policy: to encourage companies to develop solutions in Hyderabad, protect critical infrastructure and databases, create awareness, skilling and encourage innovative solutions from start-ups in working in the domain. “In the last two years, we have not seen any incident worth reporting in Telangana,” he said, adding that State has been collaborating with the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team as well.
Mr Ranjan said that the government, in conjunction with Google, is running an Internet safety programme for schools. The curriculum in these schools, he said, has been revamped. “School children are also vulnerable because many of them have access to devices,” he said. The State has also partnered with Centre for Development of Advanced Computing in an effort to develop simple programmes designed to create awareness on basic cyber-etiquette.
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Touching upon skilling, the IT Secretary said that efforts are being made to ensure modules on cyber security in engineering colleges are up-to-date. This will help students to take up careers in this domain. The government has also created a Centre of Excellence for cyber security in collaboration with the Data Security Council of India, a NASSCOM affiliate.
He also noted that there is a high demand for cyber security products in small firms, but they have little understanding of vulnerabilities and how to address them. He said that ISACA could play a pivotal role and inform them of these threats and vulnerabilities. ISACA President GCS Sarma also spoke at the event.