Hon’ble Union Minister, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad inaugurates NIC-CERT at National Informatics Centre Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Hon’ble Minister of Law & Justice, Electronics & Information Technology inaugurated ‘NIC-CERT’ on 11th December, 2017. NIC-CERT has been setup by National Informatics Centre under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). Secretary, MeitY, Shri Ajay Sawhney, Director General, NIC, Smt. Neeta Verma, various dignitaries and other senior officers were present during the occasion. Hon’ble Minister, during his inaugural speech said that as part of the Digital India programme, the Government has introduced many of the services online. Although this has made services very much accessible to the citizens, it has also exposed them to the threats and vulnerabilities which are an inherent part of cyberspace. He added that in the recent past, there has been an exponential growth in cyber attacks leading to concerns of data theft which led to Government drafting the Data protection Act. As Internet, with its ever expanding canvas of opportunities is touching the lives of people, it necessitates the requirement to upscale the existing security infrastructure. The Hon’ble Minister stated that NIC has been doing a remarkable job in securing the Government cyberspace for a long time and by setting up this centre, they have taken their experience and expertise to the next level. Hon’ble Minister, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad emphasised that for responding to the cyber attacks of today, the Government needs an agile and responsive eco-system. NIC-CERT has been setup with the objective of creating a comprehensive framework that integrates world class security components and inbuilt threat intelligence for detection, prevention and incident response. Using the tools, the team will correlate events that would help in generating a canvas of the attack surface and identify the vulnerabilities and possible exploits. The gathered intelligence assimilated with the knowledge of open web would give CERT the ability to prevent and predict attacks. NIC’s PAN-India connectivity and reach adds to its key strengths and this coupled with its enhanced ability to detect and prevent attacks would collectively upscale the Government’s ability to protect its data. NIC-CERT will operate in close coordination and collaboration with sectoral CERTs and more so with CERT-IN.