Nearly 7 lakh cyber attacks in 2020, IT Ministry tells Parliament

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeITY) told the Parliament on Monday that Indian citizens, commercial and legal entities faced almost 7 lakh cyber attacks till August this year.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has “reported 49,455, 50,362, 53,117, 208,456, 394,499 and 696,938 cyber security incidents during the year 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 (till August) respectively”, the MeITY said while responding to an unstarred question in the Lok Sabha regarding cyber-attacks on Indian citizens and India-based commercial and legal entities.

However, countering the claim that India is among the top five countries with the greatest number of cyber-attacks, the Ministry said that such “vendor reports” are not validated. However, according to a NITI Aayog report by member VK Saraswat, “India ranks 3rd in terms of the highest number of internet users in the world after USA and China, the number has grown 6-fold between 2012-2017 with a compounded annual growth rate of 44%”.