As India heads towards becoming a trillion dollar digital economy, it becomes imperative to take a look at the different dimensions which have been spawned by digitization, their implications for the country and its citizens, the associated concerns that emanate from the phenomenon and most importantly, the efforts that are essential to making the ecosystem safe and secure. The transformation from the physical to digital is conspicuous in several realms. Be it the way we interface with each other or the way public services get administered or how financial transactions get effected, digital seems to be the way to go for government, business and the general public. India and its citizens are now truly plugged into the global ‘Digital Village’, and actually shaping the contours of democratization of technology and harnessing digital for Inclusion.

Key indicators of digitalization:

1. Internet penetration
2. Availability of smart phones
3. Government services online
4. Relatively new addition to this list – number of devices that are getting connected with the Internet,

• All these are on the upward curve and clearly demonstrate and reinforce India’ growing Digital foot print. India also boasts of a robust Central Identity System that is facilitating inclusion, targeted public services delivery and platform that is supporting both G2C and B2C services.
• Smart cities, once created successfully, will be digitization in true sense as they will not only optimize utilization of resources but also step up the standard of living of its citizens.
• Digitization has also to do with paving the way for automation and creation of next generation factories, industries, supply chains, products and services.

Industry 4.0:

• Industry 4.0 which essentially means cyber physical transformation of manufacturing ushers in a new age of connected things, smart manufacturing and tailored products and services.
• Through its use of smart, autonomous technologies, Industry 4.0 strives to converge the digital world with physical to drive smart factories and enable advanced manufacturing.
• Organizations are also pro-actively leveraging Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & Deep Learning (under the bigger umbrella of Cognitive Computing) to disrupt the way the business are run and solutions are developed to meet the expectations of consumers.
• The limitless potential of algorithms is being realized by the mega corporates and also by the vibrant start-up ecosystem.

Changing Paradigm of Cyber Security:

• The demands from the digitization ecosystem are ever increasing. With it, the strategy to secure cyber space continues to evolve rapidly and propelling innovation in the realm of cyber security capability development.
• The indicative list of next generation cyber security strategy elements are as follows:
  1. Security of Recognition Technologies
  2. Extended Perimeter Security with a focus on supply chain

• Context Aware Security

1. The Shift from Detection to Response
2. Protecting Machines
3. Providing Resiliency to e-Infra

• Converging Security Disciplines.
• In the age of digitization, organizations are focussing on building resilient systems which can with-stand attacks and replace disaster recovery as a concept.
• Organizations are buildings skills and capabilities in the age of digitization for threat hunting operations.
• National Security Agencies are building deep capabilities towards a more holistic threat intelligence, mitigation, and deterrence.

Concerns of Digital Space:

The path to digitization engenders the cyber security risk. Never before encountered and unanticipated threat scenarios are emerging and confronting the Industry today and taking a toll in the form of business risks, reputational damage, disruption of services and potentially public safety hazards.  It is not just the BFSI (Banking & Financial Services industry) and the CII (Critical information Infrastructure) sectors that are bearing the brunt. Across the board industry sectors are encountering these vicious cyber-attacks.

• Cyber space is now the fifth domain of warfare.
• The World Economic Forum 2018 Risk report called out Cyber Risk as one of the top three risks along with environment disasters.
• Unique characteristics of the cyber space, namely offence dominance, difficulty in attribution of attacks, development of cyber weapons by states and the use of non-state actors to camouflage their actions are making cyberspace more and more vulnerable.
• Tracking cyber criminals and bringing them to justice is increasingly difficult owing to challenges in collection of evidence, applicability of laws, jurisdiction issues, and ineffective international frameworks to address cyber-crimes.

Cyber security preparedness needs to be enhanced by a more organised and well-coordinated action plan by Government Industry and end users. Government-Industry Partnership within India, and collaboration with Global Stakeholders is an imminent priority to address the Cyber Challenge.

Addressing Cyber Security Concerns:

1.Policy and regulatory response to drive sectors and entities to Cyber Security Preparedness

The Cyber Security Frameworks by RBI, IRDAI for Banking and Insurance Sectors, Cyber Security Framework for Smart Cities by MoHUA are steps in this direction.  But what is needed, is strong enforcement of these frameworks and similar focus in other sectors of Critical Infrastructure including Healthcare.

2.Coordination and collaboration for collective defence and quick response

There is a need for Sectoral CERTS (Computer Emergency Response Teams) and State Level CERTs to bolster the efforts of a national CERT

• Cyber Security Preparedness in India including large enterprises, SMBs and PSUs needs to be stepped up

• Micro and small enterprises are rapidly going online, and face a severe cyber risk. In Digital India, citizen is the centre of this digital momentum.
• Digital Literacy and Cyber Security Awareness and adopting safe and secure practices online, and in their digital payment transactions is a key priority of India.
• As India is going on the fast lane of harnessing emerging digital technologies to accelerate its economy, attention to and angle investments in cyber security, both from a Technology and Institutional, manpower capabilities, is now a national priority, probably as paramount as Military and para-Military forces.

Security by design and not treating Security as a bolt on feature and as a cost centre is the paradigm shift that we need to drive. This mind set change is needed in the entire ecosystem from developers, solution architects, business-large, medium, small and start-ups, academia, and government.