India-Pakistan tensions: Nirmala Sitharaman to chair meeting with banks, financial institutions on cyber readiness
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will chair a review meeting on cybersecurity preparedness of banks and financial institutions on Friday evening, amid heightened concerns that the country's critical infrastructure could be hit by cyber attacks amid the ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan.
Representatives from various public and private banks, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), NSE, BSE, and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In), among others are expected to attend the meeting. Cert-In has been coordinating with various critical sector entities to ensure their cybersecurity preparedness.
The development comes as the Pakistan Armed Forces launched multiple attacks using drones and other munitions along the entire Western Border of India on Thursday night while also resorting to numerous ceasefire fire violations (CFVs) along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian Army said that the 'drone attacks were effectively repulsed and befitting reply was given to the CFVs'. The Pakistani escalation came a day after India carried out targeted strikes on nine sites in Pakistan and PoK.
On May 7, The Indian Express had reported that following 'Operation Sindoor,' agencies and organisations which are in charge of India's critical infrastructure, such as the Power Ministry, financial institutions including banks, and telecom operators were asked to be on 'high alert' after having faced a number of cyber attacks following the Pahalgam terror attack last month.
'There have been some DDoS attacks on some infrastructure, but we have contained them. Now we are on high alert because such attempts will certainly be made,' a senior government official had said earlier. A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is a cyberattack where an attacker overwhelms a website, server, or network with malicious traffic from multiple sources, making it slow or inaccessible to legitimate users.
The Indian Express had reported on Wednesday that soon after news about Operation Sindoor broke, social media platforms such as X were flooded with misinformation related to India's strikes on nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The ministries of IT and Information and Broadcasting sprung into action and decided that the government will dip into its legal powers of blocking any content or account they feel is propagating misinformation related to the strikes.
On Thursday, social media platform X said that it received executive orders from the Indian government requiring the company to block over 8,000 accounts in India, including those belonging to 'international news organisations and prominent X users'. It said that falling foul of the executive orders could subject the company to potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment of its local employees.
Soumyarendra Barik is Special Correspondent with The Indian Express and reports on the intersection of technology, policy and society. With over five years of newsroom experience, he has reported on issues of gig workers' rights, privacy, India's prevalent digital divide and a range of other policy interventions that impact big tech companies. He once also tailed a food delivery worker for over 12 hours to quantify the amount of money they make, and the pain they go through while doing so. In his free time, he likes to nerd about watches, Formula 1 and football. ... Read More
Aanchal Magazine is Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express and reports on the macro economy and fiscal policy, with a special focus on economic science, labour trends, taxation and revenue metrics. With over 13 years of newsroom experience, she has also reported in detail on macroeconomic data such as trends and policy actions related to inflation, GDP growth and fiscal arithmetic. Interested in the history of her homeland, Kashmir, she likes to read about its culture and tradition in her spare time, along with trying to map the journeys of displacement from there.
... Read More
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