To thwart China and other enemies, NATSEC authorities engage in cyber defense drills.

The national security agencies, including the tri-services, are currently taking part in a weeklong cyber defense exercise to test the resilience of India’s crucial civilian and military infrastructure as the threat of cyberattacks from China and other adversaries grows every day, officials familiar with the situation said on Saturday.

The Defence Cyber Agency (DCyA) is organizing the cybersecurity drills, and other departments of national security are taking part in the attempt to test the firewalls protecting India’s vital infrastructure. (Representative)
The Defence Cyber Agency (DCyA) is organizing the cybersecurity drills, and other departments of national security are taking part in the attempt to test the firewalls protecting India’s vital infrastructure. (Representative)
While the government keeps mum on the subject, the Defence Cyber Agency (DCyA) is in charge of organizing the cybersecurity drills, and other national security agencies are taking part in the attempt to test the firewalls protecting India’s vital infrastructure.

After Chinese sleeper malware was discovered in Australian and Japanese networks as part of the Quad cybersecurity collaboration, US cyber professionals conducted the cyber defense exercise.

Read this: Investigators think China was the source of the AIIMS cyberattack.
“Normally, this virus is introduced into the important network and made to remain inactive for years. The virus is then turned on by China whenever it decides to destroy vital infrastructure or steal data, according to one of the officials mentioned above.

The cyber post-mortem of the assault revealed that the virus or bug to steal medical information was put in the servers far back in 2014. It is believed that Chinese hackers were behind the cyberattack on November 23, 2022, on five servers of the AIIMS in Delhi. On the military front, Pakistan launched a cyberattack against the 25th Infantry Division of the Indian Army, based in Poonch, in retaliation for the Indian Air Force (IAF)’s 2019 Operation Bander, which was launched on February 26 to destroy a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp at Balakot in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The IAF carried out the Balakot mission to exact revenge for the death of 40 CRPF soldiers by a Jaish suicide bomber in Pulwama on February 14, 2019. On February 27, 2019, Pakistan fired missiles against an Indian Army unit in Poonch in response for the Balakot attack.

With the four presidents of the Quad pledging to work together to strengthen regional capacity and resilience to cyber events and threats in Hiroshima this month, cybersecurity is also emerging as a crucial component of cooperation among the Quad nations. This year’s Quad Cyber Challenge was hosted to raise cyber awareness and provide participants across the Indo-Pacific the tools they need to be safe online. The Quad common standards for safe software and the Quad joint principles for the cybersecurity of vital infrastructure have been developed by the four nations, and work is now being done to create a framework for guaranteeing the resilience and cyber security of supply chains. These guidelines are intended to bolster regional defenses against online threats to the digital economy, key infrastructure, and services, as well as software supply chains.

While the Indian national security agencies and tri-services network are protected by air gaps and standalone servers, India’s adversaries frequently hack into the servers of the Union government under the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to steal sensitive data and intelligence through malware that has been planted. Security planners are examining the national networks to make them more robust with better firewall design as the Indian economy grows in the digital realm.