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UPSC CRITICAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE - English

CRITICAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Why in News?

Recently, the Union Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has declared IT (Information Technology) resources of ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and NPCI(National Payments Corporation of India) as ‘critical information infrastructure’.

About

• The Information Technology Act of 2000 defines Critical Information Infrastructure as a computer resource, the incapacitation or destruction of which shall have debilitating impact on national security, economy, public health or safety.
• The government, under the IT Act of 2000, has the power to declare any data, database, IT network or communications infrastructure as CII to protect that digital asset.
• Any person who secures access or attempts to secure access to a protected system in violation of the law can be punished with a jail term of up to 10 years.

Why is CII Classification and Protection Necessary

Global Practice: World over governments have been moving with alacrity to protect their critical information infrastructure.

Backbone of Countless Critical Operations: IT resources form the backbone of countless critical operations in a country’s infrastructure, and given their interconnectedness, disruptions can have a cascading effect across sectors.

IT Failure leads to Crippling other Sectors: An information technology failure at a power grid can lead to prolonged outages crippling other sectors like healthcare, banking services etc.

A Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack is an attack meant to shut down a machine or network, making it inaccessible to its intended users. DoS attacks accomplish this by flooding the target with traffic, or sending it information that triggers a crash.

Case of India:

• In October, 2020 as India battled the pandemic, the electric grid supply to Mumbai suddenly snapped hitting the mega city’s hospitals, trains and businesses.
• Later, a study by a US firm claimed that this power outage could have been a cyber-attack, allegedly from a China-linked group, aimed at critical infrastructure. The government, however, was quick to deny any cyber-attack in Mumbai.
• But the incident underlined the possibility of hostile state and non-state actors probing internet-dependent critical systems in other countries, and the necessity to fortify such assets.

How are CIIs protected in India

NCIIPC as Nodal Agency: Created in January 2014, the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) is the nodal agency for taking all measures to protect the nation’s critical information infrastructure.

Mandate of NCIIPC: It is mandated to guard CIIs from unauthorized access, modification, use, disclosure, disruption, incapacitation or distraction.

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