Chennai: The deployment of human and material resources, including budget allocations, on strengthening cyber security for the country and its vital installations is deplorably low despite the increased threat of crippling attacks by enemy countries and terrorists from cyber space, said J. Jayavardhan, AIADMK MP.
“Compared to the advanced countries like the U.S., which spend a huge portion of their national budgets on ensuring cyber security for their people and vital institutions and installations, India’s spending on cyber threat management is very very minimal. We have been pleading for increasing this critical spending”, said the young South Chennai MP, who is also a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology.
Speaking at the valedictory session of the daylong conference on ‘Digital Security: Emerging Trends’ hosted by the ‘Digital Security Association of India’ (DiSAI) here on Saturday, Jayavardhan said the Indian spending even on the vitally important research and development (R&D) segment of the IT and Cyber Security had been cut down over the years. “We have raised this issue (at the Standing Committee sessions) and the government had promised to increase the allocation”, he said.
Calling for an elaborate, extensive and exhaustive ‘Cyber Crisis Management Plan’ to be readied at the earliest by involving the best brains possible in the various fields such as IT and mathematics, the MP said people and institutions should be trained and equipped in all ways to be able to thwart any cyber attacks from enemy states, terror outfits and corporate rivals. “We need to constantly ask ourselves, how safe is our country, really?”he pointed out.
He said he had, only on Thursday, asked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley why India should not demand from the powerful social IT platforms such as the FaceBook and Twitter to keep their data relating to the Indian users within India.
“Also, why can’t our government create India’s own social platform and we, the people, will happily use it? Why should we blindly trust these foreign companies?”he asked, adding that Jaitley told him he was happy at the suggestion and promised he would “think about it”.
The MP also revealed that he has been pleading with the Centre to set up the ‘National Centre for Visual Effects, Graphics and Animation’ in his South Chennai constituency.
