MHA issues advisory to create 'Special Wing of Cyber Commandos' in all states to counter cyber threats

Amid growing cyber threats the Ministry of Home Affairs MHA on Tuesday issued an advisory to all states regarding the establishment of a Special Wing of Cyber CommandosIn the past week Indian airlines have received more than 100 hoax bomb threats resulting in inconvenience to passengers and monetary loss to the airlinesMost of the threats were posted on accounts on X and the accounts were created by using a virtual private network VPN or dark web browser that investigative agencies have been unable to detectThe decision has been taken by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre I4C after witnessing growing cyber threats and to enhance cyber defence capabilitiesIn the order copy accessed by the ANI reads that during the DGPs lGPs Conference held in the month of January 2023 and 2024 the Prime Minister recommended that a Special Wing of suitably trained Cyber Commandos should be established within a police organization to counter threats of cyber security from cyberspaceThe Ministry of Home Affairs MHA plans to raise 5000 Cyber Commandos over the next five yearsThe Cyber Commando Wing would be an integral part of the police organization and would be deemed to be a national resourceProspective Cyber Commandos will be identified from among serving personnel all ranks in the various police organizations of the StatesUTs and Central Police Organizations having basic knowledge of computer networks and operating systems reads the orderTrained Commandos will work for their parent organization and will be expected to be assigned roles according to the expertise they had developed during training in Digital forensics Incident Response and Securing Information and Communication Technology ICT InfrastructureThey shall not be utilized for roles not related to duties as a cybercommando and may be utilized by MHA to respond to or mitigate any cyberattacks and training for a short duration I4CMHA will maintain close liaison with the cyber commandos for continuous learning knowledge upgradation and utilization it further readsThe first batch of 246 Cyber commandos are undergoing six months of intensive handson training at the following institutions IIT Madras IIT Kanpur IIIT Kottayam IIIT Naya Raipur Rashtriya Raksha University RRU Gandhinagar Defence Institute of Advance Technology DIAT Pune National Forensic Science University NFSU Gandhinagar and DelhiThe duration of training is six months including handson training industry exposure and field visits to equip trainees to handle cybersecurity exigenciesThese trainees were selected on the basis of a screening test held on 24 Feb 2024 at 32 test centres across the countryI4C Plans to conduct the second screening test on 8th December 2024 to select the next set of Cyber CommandosThe Guidelines for the Cyber Commando Training Programme including complete details and the syllabus for the screening testThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever