The Government of India has given additional charge to Gulshan Rai, the Director General of Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) as India’s first Cyber Security chief. Rai has taken over his office from April 1. Rai has been heading the computer emergency response team at the department of electronics and information technology (DeiTY).
Rai has been working in the area of evolving legal framework to address issues arising out of cyberspace for more than a decade. He is also expected to head the national cyber coordination centre (NCCC) that the Indian government is setting up with a budget of Rs 1,000 crore.
According to government data, more than 700 government websites that are hosted under ‘gov.in‘ and ‘nic.in‘ domains have been hacked by cyber criminals since 2012. Reported attacks on Indian websites have increased nearly five times in the past four years. As per CERT-In, 371, 189, 155 and 13 government websites were hacked during the year 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 (January), respectively.