The Minister of State for Home Affairs, Shri Kiren Rijiju has advocated that law enforcement and security agencies worldwide must collaborate to tackle the threat posed by Cyber Crimes. Addressing the Valedictory Session of the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) here today, he observed that the existing frameworks, programmes and tools are often too slow and bureaucratic to allow for a timely and effective response. Rather than multiple partners investing in and developing the same highly specialised skill-sets and expertise, perhaps a more effective, high-level model would be for law enforcement and relevant partners to focus on distinct core competencies and to make them available to others 'as a service', he added.
Following is the text of the address delivered by Kiren Rijiju on the occasion:
“The 2-day deliberations on the subject "Challenges to Policing in 2020-How is Cyber Space shaping our approach to Cyber-Crime & Terrorism, how do we perform within it and take advantage of it", have covered a wide range of topics that are extremely relevant today.Law Enforcement Agencies that seek to keep communities safe are faced with increasing challenges of rapidly evolving technologies, cyber space being the most important.Commission of cyber-crime is getting easier as the extent to which cyber technology provides it easy to commit crime at a faraway place, in total anonymity, and with global reach. Tools and techniques to conduct cybercrime — hacking software, malware — can be downloaded freely. There are even step-by-step video instructions online that explain how to use them. In fact, crime-as-a-service is also being offered in dark web, we can see from looking at standard consumer technology that it only takes a few iterations of a product for it to become straightforward to use. So the barrier to entry for cybercrime is very minimal i.e. just needs to access internet. In the past systems would have only been available only to technology-savvy cybercriminals. Now such criminal services can be bought and used by anyone, regardless of their technical skills. What this evolution has revealed is the extent to which other criminal activities, beyond economic crime, are now being supported by these infrastructures.As per our own National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), a total of 33,531 cyber-crime cases were registered during 2014-2016. During 2016, 48.6% of cyber-crime cases reported were for illegal gain (5,987 out of 12,317 cases), followed by revenge with 8.6% (1,056 cases) and insult to modesty of women with 5.6% (686 cases). During 2016, cyber-crime (7.7%) was recorded as the fourth largest crime (first Cheating-68.4%,- second criminal breach of trust-11.7%, third forgery-8.6%) in India.