After AIIMS Nightmare, India Takes Up Task To Fortify Its Digital Infra

The Defence Cyber Agency (DCA), a tri-service command of the Indian armed forces tasked with handling cyber security threats, is carrying out an exercise to test resilience of India's cyber infrastructure from cyber attacks, mainly from China, amid escalating cyber threats.

All three services -- the Army, Air Force and Navy -- along with the DCA, are participating in the week-long exercise. It aims at assessing the durability of the country's critical civilian and military infrastructure with the threat of cyberattacks from China and other adversaries intensifying daily.

This is one more step towards India's theaterisation of the armed forces. Hectic efforts are on for seamless integration of the operational capabilities of all the three services of Indian military. The integrated theatre commands are the war-fighting entities which would fight jointly on both borders and also focus on cyber-warfare.

India experienced one of the worst cyberattacks when China-based hackers pounced upon five servers of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi on November 23 last year. Subsequent cyber post-mortem revealed that the malware designed to steal medical records had been implanted in the servers as far back as 2014.

The cybersecurity drills involve the participation of various branches of national security, all focused on evaluating the effectiveness of the protective firewalls that safeguard India's vital infrastructure. While the government maintains a discreet stance on the matter, these efforts underscore the significance placed on fortifying India's critical assets against potential cyber threats.

On the military front, during the Pakistani retaliation to the 2019 Operation Bander, the adversary targeted the 25-infantry division of the Indian Army stationed in Poonch. Operation Bander was initiated by the Indian Air Force (IAF) on February 26, 2019, to eliminate a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Balakot, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The IAF conducted this operation in response to the killing of 40 CRPF troopers in Pulwama on February 14, 2019, by a Jaish suicide bomber. As part of their retaliation, Pakistan launched missiles at the Indian Army's brigade in Poonch on February 27, 2019.

Although the Indian national security agencies and tri-services network are safeguarded through air gap measures and standalone servers, the Union government servers managed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) frequently face cyber attacks and compromises from adversaries seeking to obtain confidential information and intelligence using implanted malware.

In response to the expanding digital landscape of the Indian economy, security strategists are evaluating the national networks to enhance their resilience by implementing more robust firewall architecture.