India ranks 21 in cyber power as its cyber security strategy awaits Cabinet nod

While holding the rank as low as 21 in the National Cyber Power Index list, India is still waiting for the Union Cabinet's approval to its ‘long-in-the-works’ national cybersecurity strategy, writes senior journalist Sanjib Kr Baruah. Besides this, the senior journalist also informed that the US topped the NCPI list and China secured the second position, becoming the second most powerful nation in the world in terms of cyber capabilities.

New Delhi: Even as India has been ranked as low as 21 in a measurement of world cyber power in a path-breaking report brought out by Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, the country’s ‘long-in-the-works’ national cybersecurity strategy still awaits the Union Cabinet nod.

While US leads the National Cyber Power Index (NCPI) list, China is ranked the second most powerful nation in terms of cyber capabilities, followed by UK, Russia, Netherlands, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, and Australia. India is ranked low at 21.

The NCPI measures the cyber capabilities of 30 countries with reference to seven national objectives that include surveillance and monitoring of domestic groups, strengthening and enhancing national cyber defences, controlling and manipulating the information environment, foreign intelligence collection for national security, commercial gain or enhancing domestic industry growth, destroying or disabling an adversary’s infrastructure and capabilities, and, lastly defining international cyber norms and technical standards.

The NCPI is a combined measure of the ‘intent’ of the nation as well as the cyber ‘capability’.

On cyber ‘intent’, China topped the list, outranking even the US.

On China’s high ‘intent’ score, the Harvard report says: “China’s intent score for an offense is particularly interesting as their official position is that they are against all forms of cyber-attacks and advocate for the peaceful use of cyberspace.”

The report’s conclusions acquire significance in the backdrop of a tense border military standoff between India and China in the Himalayas in eastern Ladakh since April-May that is showing no signs of easing.

Many experts say with conventional military capabilities expected to be bogged down in the harsh Himalayan winter, an India-China cyber confrontation may be in the offing.

Meanwhile, Lt Gen (retired) Rajesh Pant, India’s National Cyber Security Coordinator, said in a webinar on Friday (September 18, 2020) that the country’s cybersecurity strategy 2020 is waiting for the approval of the Union Cabinet and may be released next month.

“I am hoping that, the month of October which is regarded globally as the ‘National Cybersecurity Awareness Month’, we have a lot of awareness programs in that month and I am hoping that one of the programs would be the release of the national strategy,” said Gen Pant addressing an industry event.

The cybersecurity policy is understood to be held back by issues of personal data protection. “We are still debating the personal data protection bill by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) and there are a lot of issues being discussed in that….I am very hopeful that it will be introduced in the Monsoon Session otherwise definitely in the Winter Session of the Parliament,” said Lt Gen Pant.