Cyber Security & Citizen of 2030 was jointly organized by the Center For Knowledge Sovereignty (CKS), Center for Joint War Studies(CENJOWS) and two schools – DPS Bhagalpur and DPS Ranchi. The knowledge partner was Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC). The topic for discussion was – Cyber Security and the citizen of 2030.
Shekhar Dutt SM, Former Governor of Chattisgarh & Chairman – Angika Development Society
Life cannot exist without challenges. There are security difficulties, challenges in technical solutions, but the entrepreneurs and enterprising people will identify those challenges, meet them squarely and come out as a winner. In fact I remember during a discussion at Harvard School, the man addressing young entrepreneurs said that if one does not find challenges on the horizon, go beyond it, seek out challenges and then deal with it. When I used to serve in a desert area, someone asked me what is so unique about the desert. I said that when you go up to a sand dune, you will find another sand dune before you, and as you go up that, you will find another dune and so on. So that is the principle of life; you keep meeting new challenges and deal with them as you go about. It was a team of young people who had invented the Internet in the mid 30’s, and thereafter it was young entrepreneurs who launched various applications for the internet. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, 2 enterprising youths of Estonia found Skype. This is indeed encouraging.
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Lt. Gen Vinod Bhatia, PVSM, AVSM, SM (Retd.), DG – Centre for Joint Warfare Studies
I would like to quote our honourable PM, who while addressing the Combined Commanders Conference of senior military leaders in December 2015 on board our aircraft carrier Vikramaditya stated –
“Beyond the immediate, we are facing a future where security challenges will be less predictable; situations will evolve and change swiftly and technology changes will emerge. The threat may be known but the enemy will be invisible. Domination of cyber space will become increasingly important.”
It is not just the borders that need to be guarded, but cyber space is the new area that equally needs to be protected. The enemies at the borders are however visible but the cyber enemies are not.
nation faces the same threats. Cyber or security is not confined to India alone. Some of the countries have taken steps to mitigate these threats. In our case we have been little slow but we have been taking slow and steady steps. It is noteworthy that there are 450 million internet users and so the threats appear to be even more intense. Also we have not incorporated cyber education in our curriculum.
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Lt Gen. Dr D B Shekatkar, PVSM, AVSM, VSM (Retd.), Chairman -CKS
If you are well in life, India will surely do well -this was stated by Swami Vivekananda 100 years back. And you the students will be the one who will abide by this principle. By 2030, most of you who are studying in schools would reach the age of 30 and will be in the peak of your career of your life. Today social media is impacting the minds of people very fast. It is both horrifying and alarming at the same time. Most of you are aware that all the good things in the world started from India. The things which start from India remain for a long time and they don’t disappear- that is the power of India. We have our cultural roots and heritage and the world is looking at India with great hope. This brings me to the next point that knowledge is power. While 19th century was the century of muscle power, 20th century when we were born is the century of money power; we could buy anything with the power of money. The current 21st century is the century of knowledge power. And this knowledge power will be threatened by cyber security.
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Lt. Gen. V M Patil, AVSM, PVSM (Retd.) Vice Chairman – CKS
The 20th century saw 2 world wars and a number of regional conflicts. But the form of warfare was very different back then, like Soviet Russia was dismantled after 45 years of cold war without firing a single bullet. But that has changed with the coming of technology. An established Egyptian government was thrown to winds by Arab Springs entirely by social media; now in our own country in the last few years we have seen social media playing hell with the university campuses here in Delhi and other parts of India. Implication of all these is that there is a potent danger from the social media and the emergence of cyber technology.
not shy away from it and also let’s not adopt the practice of banning. Banning is not the answer and ignoring is not the solution. Time has come for us now to bring in cyber technology as part of the educational system, may be not from the earlier standards but when children reach 8th and 9th standard and thereafter make it a part of their curriculum.
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Lt. Gen. Vinod Khandare, AVSM, SM, DG – Defence Intelligence Agency
The wars of today (in view of national security) and tomorrow will be a combination of kinetic and non-kinetic wars. The requirement of military hardware will continue. When we look at our understanding or concept of warfare, we look at planes, satellite, submarine, ships, tanks and guns. That will continue because it is one of the most importance things for resistance where you have to keep you national interest safe. What is most important now is the non kinetic means which is regulating and controlling these kinetic majors. So while it is the man behind the weapon system it is also the technology which the man behind weapon system is going to use. Today if you carry a mobile phone, willingly you are carrying an identity card without being forced to do so; voluntarily you are surrendering you data, location with all the technologies available to the super powers without naming anyone. The location of each of the important and very important person is known, their itinery is known and it requires no miracles to know who is moving where.
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Vinit Goenka, Secretary – CKS
If we keep our data in someone’s house, he is going to use it and according to a famous Marathi phrase – the one who protects the pond will always taste the water. If my data is outside my precinct, it is going to be used for their purpose against my wish. Can we have the data within my precinct? I am not talking about the censorship that China loves to talks about, but I would like everyone to visit every websites on this earth. But then we need to see that any kind of data is not going outside the precinct and we strongly advocate it.
The myth of ‘Vasudev Kutumbhkam’ does not hold true anymore. This myth should be broken in front of the students of today. There is no such thing, we live in a real world and our neighbours are our real challenge. We are a nation and we cannot afford to become weak.
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Rear Admiral S Y Shrikhande, AVSM (Retd)
Technology remains the primary instrument for cyber security and cyber offences. I had learnt long ago that ‘loose lips sink ships’. The unsaid thought of ‘loose lips sink ships’ rightfully points out to the need for prudence. This is my first and over arching proposition that prudence as an individual means you are cautious about what you speak in the context of where you speak. It encompasses the attitude of building caution in ensuring security of information that has to become second nature. It is difficult to say that how long these will save the future of children. The safety of the individual, the safety of the institution, of the society and the nation are all linked in a hierarchy. It is believed that once the prudence is internalized, it becomes an attitude which is linked to virtual connectivity. And we must remember that in the earlier days when we used to pay for calls, there was the element of fiscal prudence. But today it is free and that creates its own problems.
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Brig (Retd) Manjeet Singh, DACIDS (DIARA)
The cyber world is a hugely complex word. Today we have 3.7 billion of users, 500 million in our own country. Added to it are the mobile devices which are all across. We have one billion mobile devices, out of which 30% are smartphones. And to add to that we now have one billion IoT on the network. So see the complexity which has been added. IoT is going to become 50 billion across the world by 2020. So it’s a hugely complex world of cyber space in which we have to operate as common cyber citizens and the cyber warriors of tomorrow. There are two types of network on which we operate and function – first is the Air gapped networks which have also been built on imported hardware. So how much we are secured is a question mark. Second is the dependence on internet, like any other citizen we at the army too have to function by depending on the internet.
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Jayadeva Ranade, Cabinet Secretariat – RAW
We have a new kind of warfare in cyber space – sci-war, cyber threats and media. Our biggest challenge other than China is Pakistan. China has set aside $90 billion for expanding its footprint across the globe for propaganda and moulding the people’s mind. It is primarily including the cyber domain to extend its reach. 80% of the main service providers in our telecommunication industry are Chinese companies. Huawei and ZTE complete them and they today cover Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Maldives. It is their system that is operating there, whether it is a landline or a wifi. So, we need to really look at it and start thinking how we can set up either a parallel system or a system that in course of time will take over.
We say that we have a problem of manpower, but I can rightly point it out where this manpower is. All our best designers and developers are sitting abroad. We all are IT coolies who are living here. We are doing backend operations for all the large MNCs which indeed are very low end and we need to upgrade that. And the way to upgrade this is by starting cyber security, cyber training and cyber awareness.
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Amitabh Mathur, IPS, Former Head Aviation Research Centre – RAW
I speak more as a novice on the subject of security but also as a concerned human being or as a concerned citizen of the country. I say that change is inevitable. Technology is upon us and in many manifestations of this cyber world; we are getting constantly overwhelmed by technology. Hyper connectivity in our daily lives has the potential to erode our humanity in unprecedented ways. Now phones, screens have changed the way we interact with each other. A study was conducted in which it revealed that 89% of people are interrupted by their telephone, WhatsApp and SMS messages while they are in a conversation. 82% of the respondents have said that use of devices had a negative impact on their social interaction. These are very important statistics. Science gathers knowledge faster than the society gathers wisdom, so we must learn from this and I think this is the lesson for the younger students who have these gadgets in hand which allows them access to anything in the world.
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Dr S D Pradhan, Former – Joint Intelligence Committee
I would focus only on what is happening beyond the borders particularly in the last 5 years in USA, Russia, UK and China as they have all linked it with cyber force and have all come up with a national cyber strategy. I think we as a nation must also take into account cyber force for developing a counter attack to the threats as this is what is happening in all the four countries. There are three things in common – one, they have linked it with national security and they talk of cyber warfare. Second, they talk of deterrents that while using cyber force what deterrents they can use and accept surrender from the adversary. And third, reliance on domestic equipment – China has done it in a very methodical manner. It has developed a strategic support force which is mainly for cyber warfare that gives support to the PLA and PLAAF.
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Brig. Pradeep Arora, Chairman – Cyber Security Group
If you look at the users today – the users of internet and all the mobile devices are exploding day by day. As the tariffs of data and calls have started fallen, the users have also started moving on to the cities, and this included not only the literate population but also the people who are semi literate or illiterate. We are forcing them today to use these mobile devices for accessing their own financial assets, accessing their own data as we already refer to it. And as we all are trying to find the solution, there are challenges that citizens are going to face in accessing their own data and what we on behalf of the government is delivering to them. So possibly one of the solutions lies in providing them a safe environment – maybe we need apps, safe frameworks which can also be made available to the children.
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Dr B V L Narayana, Director – CRIS
I was looking at two things and these two really worries me. I am from a public service system. I give services to every citizen of India and therefore I am always worried when a citizen doesn’t get a service. For me security and safety do not distinguish itself, it is always a problem when both are merged. Whether my technology fails and I don’t give a service is a problem, whether a citizen creates a problem and then doesn’t allow other citizens to get service is always a problem. Therefore I don’t distinguish between safety and security in any manner. My other problem is as technology progressed, we have also adopted technology and IT in a very -very large way. I don’t know how many of you know that all the trains which are running on our systems come under computer control. The entire network – planes and trains are running on systems today. We are now even trying to run trains without manpower in some system. This might create a challenge again if we do not monitor these systems 24×7.
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Dr Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director – C-DOT
There are some cyber tips. Like ‘Laalach nehi karna’ (don’t be greedy on the net). There are honey pots deliberately placed to get all the information out of you. If you find something too good, verify it first. Always have 3 different strategies to verify it, especially when you share something that is very private or dangerous for you if it is divulged to a 3rd person. You are dealing with a stranger till the time you don’t get your 3 factor verifications done. Pornographic sites have embedded mechanism for capturing the mindset that you have. They take you gradually to a stage where you start getting harm. So draw a line when you realize that you are experiencing something which is anti-social. Also you should switch off your location data on your mobile phone, so that your location does not get tracked. Too many apps on your phone also create problems. Delete the apps that you do not use much. Anything that has foreign characters in it, try to avoid it because that particular mail or message is designed to trap you into revealing something.
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Avadhesh Mathur, IPS, Cabinet Secretariat – RAW
I would like to highlight 3 challenges with respect to cyber terrorism which impinges upon national security –
The character of cyber terrorism has changed. When I joined the services 42 years back, we were told that dacoity, theft or organized crimes were major threats. But within no time, at the turn of the century we found that the character of these threats has changed. With passage of time, terrorism has transformed into cyber threat. We have also seen that now newer technologies are emerging – machine intelligence, big data, robotics which we see as a boon to mankind. But at the same time, we should be aware of the challenges that these technologies might pose for us. Perhaps it is high time we started looking at these technologies.
The 2nd challenge is the invisible element. We know that the hacker who is sitting thousand miles away from us is invisible to us. In most of the cases cyber crimes are committed with the cyber criminal remotely operating everything; we have seen the US Presidential elections getting affected, a nuclear plant in Iran getting disabled and still we do not know the source of the threat.
The 3rd challenge is that of sensitization. I remember we used to visit different organizations and speak about the security of their computers. They are simple scientists who only are involved in their work. If you try to tell them these things, they won’t try to understand.
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Dr. Vatsala Joshi Pande, OSD (Research) to Hon’ble Speaker – Lok Sabha Secretariat
We cannot handle cyber world in the way the nation handles agriculture and industry. When we got independent, we were into agriculture and only looked into only 1 aspect of production – which is to increase production to feed our citizens. It was a similar case in industries too, where we looked at increasing GDP without understanding the pollution effects. But in case of cyber world we have to look into totality. Cyber world is both a very individual and collective point. So as an individual and as a nation, we have to be very well versed in using the internet. This point should go into policy decisions as well. Personally I feel that the public representatives should be aware about these cyber threat aspects in totality, so that policies can be framed accordingly and a general awareness is created among the masses. Knowing the cyber world properly will bypass half the danger of cyber threats.
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Rajesh Kumar Srivastava, Pro Vice Chairman – DPS (Bhagalpur & Greater Ranchi)
There is a contradiction in whether you adopt technology to a limit or not. Technology has taken us in its grip whether we like it or not but there is also the need to make our youth aware of the use of technology – both defence and offensive mechanism. I am proud to announce the creation of the first Cyber Forensic Lab machine intelligence analysis across the country with the help of NTRO.
The creation of an intelligence agency coordinating the intelligence arms of 3 military services that has long been called for by senior intelligence Indian military officers was formally recommended by the cabinet group of ministers headed by the then Deputy PM of India, Shri Lal Krishna Advaniji. The committee also recommended a national security doctrine that is yet to be adopted. The cabinet group of ministers investigated the various intelligence lapses during the Kargil war and recommended a comprehensive reform of the Indian intelligence agency.
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Uma Sudhindra, Member Governing Board – IIM Vizag
Since the Kargil war we have relearned the timeless lesson that we always do not get to fight wars which we are prepared for or inclined to. On June 27th this year, terror struck at a place not far from Mumbai; however, unlike 26/11 most people did not even realize that a terror has struck. 26/11 was witnessed by the whole world. This attack of 27th June was a quiet attack but yet crippled India’s largest container port – the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust. The terminal with the capability of 1.8 million container units came to a complete halt. The attacker was a malware called Petya and the hackers were faceless attackers from an unknown place. Fortunately, the damage was contained. Now imagine if this has happened in an airport, Delhi Metro, electricity grid or even our nuclear stations. Since the beginning of internet revolution, more than 26, 000 defaced websites and 91 lakh infected systems have been detected in India. This is despite the fact that 77% of cyber attacks are still going unreported. That is the vulnerability of our cyber system and this is like a ticking bomb out here. The smartphones, laptops, applications that we use and search engines all are hackable. Nothing is impregnable.
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Pavitran Ranjan, Cyber Security Research Center
When you start looking at cyber security from the perspective of information warfare, it’s a totally different perspective. We are one of the oldest civilizations in the world but we are a very young nation. There is a reason behind it, because in the last 1000 years we have been repeatedly invaded and ruled over. If you study history you realize most of our wars were lost by treachery from within. One of the topic is “Can national security be outsourced?” We cannot outsource national security to China or to any other nation. While we think about China, we immediately see a red flag. They have an authoritarian regime and have open laws as far as cyber security is concerned. Information warfare is a concept which is primarily American. By 2030, if we do not do a drastic course correction, I see a very difficult time again. Our entire infrastructure is being built on compromised multinational MNC appliances, hardware and software with relevant and confidential documents all at the backend. So you realize how much we are at a danger.
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Sanjukta Mookherji Sahani, NGO JaagoTeens & Cadence
Before you do anything on the web/internet, please be sure that you do not fall into wrong hands. Think, whether you would like the same things said about you. There are a whole lot of rules and norms that can be followed while you are online. Just because you are anonymous on the web does not mean that you are not traced.
You need to get this into the mindset of your children that whenever they are into trouble or into any embarrassing situation, they should first come to their parents or teachers. The second thing is when you accept friends request, you see that you know him/her personally. Always have a second channel of verification whether you know that person or not. Always have a passion for learning as young students and a passion for science and technology. By 2030, you can be rest assured that you are going to face huge competition from intelligent robots.
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Dr. Arunima Chakravorty, Principal – DPS (Bhagalpur & Greater Ranchi)
Cyber Security Citizen, as the tropic goes is a well thought out issue and that needs to be addressed seriously by every users and stakeholders. Nowadays we do almost everything online like shopping, banking, emotional mapping to socializing and card making. All of these make the internet which we call the cyber space very vulnerable and attractive target for criminals. We should be focusing more on cyber essentials and cyber experience while teaching and its consequence as students are very vulnerable to cyber crime. In a very recent study conducted by Uninor in some of the states, it highlighted that one-third of the school going students have experienced cyber crime in the form of cyber stocking, deformation, cyber bulling and hacking. Children rarely speak about their online activities and experience and in case if they do so parents are very ignorant about it and take it as a small happening. Parents remain under the impression that children are on the net doing their projects assigned by the school. But this should not be the case. Parents should closely monitor of what their kids are doing while they are online.
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Ajay Ranjan Mishra, Director – Ericsson
One of the reports says that in 2013, 4.4 trillion gigabytes of data were generated, in 2020 we would have 44 trillion gigabytes of data and by 2030 there will be an annual increase of almost 54% of data. So that would be a huge amount of data. Mark Zuckerberg bought WhatsApp for $20 million. Children know that it is free to download, yet he paid that amount.
As per the report, the defense budget for our country was around $53 billion this year. But Zuckerberg invested $20 billion which is more than 1/3rd of the budget that we have for defense. Couple of days ago there was a report that President Obama told Zuckerberg about fake news element on the Facebook which might have impacted the US elections.
Reason why I am trying to bring all these elements together is that the amount of data that would be coming in 2030 and the threat that will come with that will be far more than what is coming now from countries. The kind of data that would be generated in another 13-15 years is mindboggling, if we do not try to address the threats or mitigate those threats from today itself, it would become a major problem as compared to what we might have seen or experienced on the borders.
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Bharat Panchal, Head – Risk Management SVP, National Payments Corporation of India
we are talking about civil society, the major talk is around application, device and public infrastructure that we are using as a citizen. The fact remains that Mobile Disruption has recently taken the country by storm. We have today close to 1bn mobile handsets, but there are 10% or more that are routed devices which we are not aware of. The incident that happened last year – the data of 3.2mn debit cards getting breached is an example to show. The maximum incidents were reported from China and the maximum withdrawal that happened outside India was in China. The major issue what we are facing today is that today’s generation and the next generation is a complete disjoint. Today’s generation is not educated enough on how to take care of cyber security. I think this is the right time to adopt a policy that we have mandated to have a cyber security defense system.
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Dr. Savita Kakar, Chief Scientist – DRDO
Indigenization is one solution we have in hand and DRDO and other organizations are taking steps towards it. But for doing that the private industry, DRDO and academia have to come together because I have found that there is a lot of knowledge lying barren but they are in the form of compartments. So we have to come together to do work of such magnitude. It is very easy to say that we want to indigenize things but it is very difficult to accept. Generally we are more overwhelmed by imported stuff. Whatever products we are indigenizing, when they go to the user, instead of accepting and giving any suggestions, they start comparing them with the imported stuff. People have to change this mentality and they need to start accepting things. We have suddenly started doing indigenization and we might not be able to deliver the products of imported level. So, definitely some motivation is needed to accept these things.
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Ambika Khurana, Public Policy – Government and Regulatory Affairs, IBM
We cannot outsource our security to China. The world has been talking about ‘China Plus One’ model but we as Indians are absolutely tired of Chinese products. So while we try and shun the usage of these Chinese products, we absolutely must understand that it is time that our Make In India campaign that our Prime Minister Modi started with a lot of fervour and excitement is really supported. It is very crucial time for all of us as Indians whether we work for Indian companies or other multi-national companies, that we completely support Make In India. We also firmly want the Government of India to strengthen public private partnership so that our knowledge, expertise which has been gained over multiple years of working across geographies can be leveraged within India. I represent a company that is 107 years old. India is one of our base in terms of employees, research and software labs. We are very enthusiastic about working closely with the Government of India.
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Sumitra Goenka, Member – CKS
As a parent I feel a lot needs to be done in India today. We have a population who are not technology literate or tech savvy but their children are exposed to technology to such an extent that parents have no idea about how alarming the situation is. So I believe that more interaction with all the stakeholders is necessary and the government and academia should come together to make sure that the cyber security threats and problems that the people are not aware of is addressed at the grassroots level.
The second area which I see is the cyber security targeting technology and the agriculture industry. India is an agrarian society; there are a lot of upcoming technologies in the food sector. It is becoming smarter with use of smart containers, AI and IoT. So this sector is most vulnerable to such attacks, especially the supply chain management. If we don’t have safeguards to protect ourselves then the entire country and food security will be compromised.
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Professor Chandan Chowdhury, Associate Dean – Indian School of Business
On 22th September, when I used to be a managing director in an MNC, I received an email that I have to do a remittance to HSBC bank for acquiring a company. My president then got into a call with me telling me to do it immediately. It was actually not my president but a robot; the email was a fake email. My point is that the size of the cyber world is increasing. We cannot run away from it and we have to protect it. We know about in US this month the identity and confidential data of 143 million people have been hacked. The government of India might have removed 500, 1000 rupee notes but now cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is becoming very popular. The value of Bitcoin in 19 months has increased by 10 times which resulted in many people investing in it. Now if you look at Bitcoin itself, we had a huge catastrophe with a company called Bitfinex where 65 million dollar worth of bitcoin was actually hacked.
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Commander L R Prakash (Retd) Director – CDAC
Why do we need indigenous and open source initiative? First is money, which is going into the software industry. One thing common with all the software companies is that none of them has an Indian flag. Where is this money going then – if it is going in the license fee, or research fee abroad then we are directly spending our money in enriching other nations. There is a set of 3 Microsoft products which every PC has – the windows operating system, the patch management system that gets your windows updates and Microsoft Office – they put out disclaimers stating that they don’t collect any personal data from you. But the truth is that they basically are collecting everything from its users. A combination of these three software essentially means that they map your entire network; they map your entire organisation, your users and your users’ network.
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Rahul Aggarwal, Director – PwC
In 2030, technology will be 13 years old from now. By using technology you can control anything. We hear of Driverless cars, which will gain momentum in coming years; or electricity in a house being controlled, this is how technology is changing. Our dependency on technology and IT is very high. You can access information services and transaction services online by merely sitting at home. So if all this is happening, how are we going to manage it? What are the areas as a govt., as a private corporate and as a society we need to address? That’s what we need to discuss. But from our perspective, whatever research we have done, most of the countries will always have a critical infrastructure for the financial sector, defence sector, transport sector etc. Every country has defined it. If the critical infrastructure is not available for the society at large we have a major disruption. From the govt. perspective, critical infrastructure always needs to be protected.
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Prof. Dr. Sharad Sinha, National Council of Education Research and Training
I feel like we are in a world where technology is outnumbering technology. The technology which is in place to make us secure is making us more insecure. There are a lot of challenges as an academician which I see that are coming up in the years to come. In a class room we see a lot of things happening nowadays. Children are biologically becoming isolated, but getting united with their smartphone and other devices. They are becoming more psychologically challenged. They talk to their devices, but do not communicate or do not talk to their parents or teachers. Even if they talk, the communication has become very less. I foresee in the forthcoming years that all our books will be digitized, robots will take up as teachers and will have a new role of a digital guru in classrooms and schools and teachers especially will disappear from the scene as all the information will be available online to study.
