Shaking hands in cyberspace

India and the US have collaborated in various fields over the last few years. While, on the diplomatic front, there has been far-reaching p...

India and the US have collaborated in various fields over the last few years. While, on the diplomatic front, there has been far-reaching progress, gains on the military and economic fronts are shaping up.

One of the newest areas of such cooperation is in the field of combating cyber attacks. When Prime Minister Vajpayee visited the US last November, a joint declaration was signed between the two nations, which included the setting up of a ‘Joint Cyber Terrorism Initiative’. This initiative was taken forward with the instituting of the Indo-US Cyber Security Forum. In fact, in April, a senior US team, under the leadership of Lincoln Bloomfield, the assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, visited India. The visit set the tone for active cooperation between the two nations in the area of cyberspace protection.

Yet, despite all this, there has been no formal move to cooperate in the area of cyberspace protection, both in terms of intelligence and defence functions. This could be attributed mainly to the preponderance of other issues of the real world, as compared to the virtual world. Today, the dependence on cyberspace for many critical functions has increased hugely and the transnational nature of several of these functions makes it extremely important to involve global cooperation at different levels. This dependence has, no doubt, given rise to individual actions across various nations but these are insufficient to combat the menace in their totality.

An example of such discrepancy is found in the case of the Love Bug virus attack in 2000. This virus caused losses worth US $10 billion and investigations traced it to two Filipino youth. However, there was no law in the Philippines at that time to punish them and they went free in spite of the great havoc they had caused. Today, the frequency of cyber attacks has increased manifold and losses from such attacks are also mounting.

In such a scenario, the Indo-US Forum could be a precursor for many similar initiatives. There are reasons why India and the US can gain from such a partnership. The US has the largest spread of cyberspace infrastructure and virtually every government and business function relies heavily on it. India has had a significant role to play in the growth of such a robust infrastructure, seeing that it was Indians who had manned and are still manning these installations. The US recognises India as a software power today and expects India to play a strong role in securitising cyberspace. Many Indian companies have also taken a leading role in developing security software solutions.

The US also values Indian cooperation in the area of intelligence sharing in cyberspace. Today, hostile attacks on many US networks originate in our neighbourhood and some of the simpler forms of these attacks have been the handiwork of Pakistani groups like ‘GForce’. After the September 11, such concerns have increased and, in a recent report by the Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth College, it was contended that many cyber attacks would emanate from this region.

While the establishment of the Forum is a welcome step, the most important need of the hour is to make it active. For this, a concrete plan of action would have to be devised. There are some important observations that need to be made from India’s point of view. We need, for instance, access to new technical knowledge in this area. Presently the US embargoes many such software applications to versions at least a couple of rungs lower. This could come in the way of true cooperation. Another area of active support must be the constant training and orientation of our specialised forces for this purpose by the various agencies of the US government.

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The US should also desist from agreeing to provide similar technological support to Pakistan. This could vitiate the very purpose of this Forum. As is well-known, Pakistan is already misusing cyberspace. There are reports of the possible clandestine support to Pakistan for cyber warfare capabilities by some nations and the US should actively stop this from happening again.

The Forum, then, certainly needs to deliver in more ways than it has done so far.