Amid Narendra Modi government’s greater push for digital India campaign, a study has found that the country ranks fourth in terms of online security breaches. A study carried out by security solutions firm Symantec has revealed that India accounts for 5% of total global threat detection. US and China, which have often faced allegations of cyber war and espionage, occupy the top two slots with a combined total of 34% of such detections.
While China has succeeded in bringing down hacks from nearly 24% in 2015 to under 10% in 2016, instances of online fraud observed a rise in India from 3.4% in 2015 to 5.1% in 2016, says the report. “Data breaches are often under-reported in territories where there are no legal requirements in place,” Tarun Kaura, Symantec Director (Solution Product Management) Asia Pacific and Japan, said.
“Symantec uncovered evidence linking North Korea to attacks on banks in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ecuador and Poland. This was an incredibly audacious hack and the first time we observed strong indications of nation state involvement in financial cyber crime,” Kaura said adding “While their sights were set even higher, the attackers stole at least $94 million.”
In 2016, more than 1.1 billion identities were exposed by cyber criminals in data breaches across the globe, almost double the number stolen in 2015 (563 million stolen identities). Online activists have raised alarm over government’s over emphasis on Aadhar scheme as they allege the bio-metrics information stored with government are vulnerable to cyber attacks. The recent revelation by the State Bank of India that account details of its customers could have been compromised puts such a ranking into perspective.
Last Year, Yahoo came out with a shocker that over a billion user accounts were hacked making it the largest data breach ever been reported.
