Security focus lacking in tech development: NTRO chief

NTRO, established in 2004, is housed under the National Security Advisor in the Prime Minister's Office and focuses on intelligence gathering.

National Technical Research Organisation, NTRO, NTRO chairman, Satish Chandra Jha, cyber security, cyber security cases, India news, Indian Express

The NTRO chairman, also a former Special Director in the Intelligence Bureau, said India needs to be more proactive to common cyber threats, such as data breaches, supply chain contamination and “malicious actors using social media for violent extremist ideologies”.

Although India is the fifth most important target of cyber threats, the country does not focus enough on security during the technology development process, National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) chairman Satish Chandra Jha told an audience of cyber security experts at the cyber security Nullcon conference at Dona Paula in Goa.

“What is the difference between Israel and the rest of the world?… Any product they develop they do consider the security of the product… Unfortunately, in our country, whenever we plan something, a majority of our industries have never kept security as a very, very important factor,” said the IPS officer.

NTRO, established in 2004, is housed under the National Security Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office and focuses on intelligence gathering. Under the agency is the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) which focuses on threats to information infrastructure.

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“There is hardly any coordination among nations on how to police cyber space. And messaging applications complicate the problem even more,” Jha said.

Another NTRO official, Major General Sandeep Sharma, said cyber tactics have become more state-sponsored but executed by non-state actors in locations outside their home countries, making attribution difficult.

(The correspondent was in Goa at the invitation of Nullcon Conference)

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Nizamuddin went to the US in December 2015 for a Master’s course in Computer Science, which he completed from Florida Institute of Technology in 2017. He completed his B.Tech in ECE from Jayaprakash Narayan College of Engineering, Mahbubnagar.

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