New Delhi: While the Indian economy is on an upswing, growing consistently at an average of over 9%, there are serious security concerns that loom ahead on the horizon, challenging our extraordinary progress. These concerns pertain not only to traditional security threats, such as terrorism, communal or sectarian violence, crime and militancy/ insurgency but increasingly include non-traditional and unconventional threats as well.
In addition to major terrorist attacks on our commercial and financial centre – Mumbai, which are largely perceived as efforts to undermine our economic strength, there have been recent attacks on our scientific institutes, such as the alleged terror attack on the Indian Institute of Science (IIS) Bangalore in December 2006.
While our prowess in science and technology, and more specifically in Information Technology (IT), forms the cornerstone of our economy, in reality these comprise soft targets, which are highly vulnerable to a myriad of threats, ranging from physical acts of terrorism to electronic attacks on information assets.
The IT industry has recorded phenomenal growth in the last five years, especially software services, Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) and the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector. While capitalizing on India’s geographic location (suitable time zone) and massive pool of skilled English speaking manpower, companies have struck innovative business outsourcing models to garner maximum profits.
Robust ICT infrastructure
However, all this has been possible only in the backdrop of a robust Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure. In the last decade or so, the government, public sector and private companies have seen tremendous opportunity in the sector and have accordingly invested large capital in building up suitable information infrastructure. This includes submarine undersea cables, satellite transponders or receivers, and massive on-ground, telecom and Internet connectivity.
As businesses grew, there were immense demands to expand the infrastructure, which were adequately met from time-to-time. However, we have become increasingly dependent on this infrastructure, and as a result, our vulnerabilities have also risen manifold. Today, we are highly vulnerable to any disruption, even if it is of a short-term nature, infrastructure and IT development notwithstanding.
The risk spectrum is extremely broad, ranging from non-state actors waging cyber-attacks, adversaries carrying out information warfare (IW) and deviant individuals wreaking havoc on the information superhighway with deadly electronic viruses and worms. It is not in the scope of this article to delve into technicalities or details of these, but it is pertinent to note that United States (US) which is the most wired nation in the world and thus most susceptible to IW, has not experienced any major IW attack on its infrastructure.