While the interim budget in February saw a near doubling of India’s cybersecurity budgets, there is considerable ground to cover for India to build a well-rounded cyber resilience strategy that is meaningful and effective for all stakeholders – citizens, corporations and for India as a nation state.
From a citizen standpoint, there is a need to build social equity around not just access to digital and awareness of its safer use across all sections of society, but should there be any cyber compromise, there also needs to be equitable access to remedial action and justice. However, challenges around cyberspace jurisdiction in India, coupled with the territory-agnostic nature of cybercrimes, create legal ambiguities and impede delivery of fast and fair action against perpetrators of cybercrime. ‘Cybercrimes come under the purview of the state, whereas the crime could have been committed from anywhere within India or outside of the country, and the beneficiary of the crime could be in a completely different location. Thus, there is a need for better coordination between law enforcement agencies to plug such gaps, and to build true social equity and trust in digital,’ said Sundereshwar Krishnamurthy, Partner and Leader- Cybersecurity, PwC India.
For India’s enterprises, the biggest challenge today is around the widening gap between the demand for cyber talent and the supply available to them. This often leads to the overall cost of implementation of cybersecurity shooting up. The country needs an immediate and strategic plan to build a pool of skilled and highly skilled cyber professionals, and this calls for an ecosystem push. As a niche, cutting-edge skill, cybersecurity needs its own focused institutions, forums and training programmes. Skill development around cybersecurity must be incentivised along with positioning of cybersecurity as a mainstream, well-charted career choice.
Overall, India needs to build an enabling ecosystem for its indigenous cybersecurity products and solutions developers. This would require a regulatory push, R&D incentivisation, easing of access to funding and markets, and building of a culture of prioritising local for areas critical to national security, such as cybersecurity. This will spur innovation and reduce India’s high-risk dependence on imported technologies for cybersecurity. ‘While all these efforts will help improve the country’s cyber posture in the near to mid term, India needs a long-term cyber strategy with an eye on the future. Most developed countries have a well laid-out cyber roadmap, critical in today’s evolving risk environment. Such a blueprint will not only serve to drive a culture of cyber vigilance in the country but also help position India as a global leader in cyber,’ said Manu Dwivedi, Partner and Leader, Cybersecurity and Risk Consulting GCC, PwC India.
