Pune: Lt Gen Rajesh Pant (Retd), national cyber security coordinator, National Security Council Secretariat, said on Monday said that the National Cyber Security Strategy 2023 is in final stages of approval. Speaking at an event organised by Persistent Systems Limited in Pune on Monday, the official said the first version of National Cybersecurity Reference Framework (NCRF) document is ready for public release.
“National Cyber Security Strategy 2023 is an important document that supersedes the 2013 policy. From 2013 till 2023, the world has changed as new threats have emerged calling for new strategy. The document will be put in public domain after a final check by the committee to ensure that nothing confidential is released,” he said.
Lt Gen Pant said that the government has been consistently working on providing structured guidance on cyber security to critical sectors of the nation which include telecom, power and energy, transportation, finance, strategic entities, government entities and health. This major initiative is driven by the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre under a project funded by the National Security Council Secretariat.
Organisations can use the NCRF to improve their cybersecurity posture, reduce data breach risk or any cybersecurity incident, ensure compliance with regulations and enhance operational efficiency, he said.
The official said that the Centre has spent ₹700 crore on national cyber awareness and cyber skilling programme initiative.
“There are two aspects to cyber security. First is cyber hygiene for all of us and cyber skilling of the cyber workforce i.e. the people who enforce cyber security. For the first part we have a programme ISEA (Information Security Education and Awareness) programme which is now in phase II, implemented by the ministry of electronics and IT and CDAC, Hyderabad is the nominated agency for spreading public awareness. Cyber skilling is another programme run in government and private universities where syllabus has changed as per the changing needs. I agree that a lot more needs to be done,” he said.
