Indian Government Asked Requiring Organizations to Report Cybersecurity Incidents within Six Hours

The Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-in), an organization that deals with emergency rescue efforts, published new guidelines recently.

In accordance with the new guidelines, the following organizations are required to report all the cybersecurity incidents within six hours of being discovered:-

• Service providers
• Intermediaries
• Data centers
• Government entities

Types of Incidents to be Reported

There are a number of types of incidents that are covered by the act, including:-

• Inter alia
• Compromise of critical systems
• Targeting scanning
• Unauthorized access to computers
• Unauthorized access to social media accounts
• Website defacements
• Malware deployments
• Identity theft
• DDoS attacks
• Data breaches
• Leaks
• Rogue mobile apps
• Attacks against servers
• Attacks against network appliances (Example: Routers and IoT devices).
• Fake mobile Apps
• Malicious mobile applications are used to conduct malicious attacks.

Several of the organizations and entities mentioned above will need to synchronize their clock with the following organizations for proper coordination:-

• National Informatics Center (NIC)
• National Physical Laboratory (NPL)

In addition to any security incident reports or CERT-In requests, all system logs of the service providers that we have mentioned above must be maintained for 180 days within Indian jurisdiction.

Apart from this, the VPN service providers should also be required to retain all the key data for no less than five years of its subscribers, and here below we have mentioned all the key data:-

• The names of subscribers who have hired the services must be validated.
• Detailed information about the period of hiring, including dates.
• The number of IPs allocated to the members/the number of IPs that they are using.
• During the registration/onboarding process, you will be prompted for your e-mail address, a valid IP address, and a time stamp.
• The reason for engaging the services.
• Contact details and addresses that are valid.
• In the leasing industry, the ownership pattern of the clients/subscribers is an important factor.

Similarly, virtual asset (cryptocurrency) service providers need to implement the same policy as well. Here’s what CERT-In stated:-

“To address the identified gaps and issues so as to facilitate incident response measures, CERT-In has issued directions relating to information security practices, procedure, prevention, response, and reporting of cyber incidents under the provisions of sub-section (6) of section 70B of the Information Technology Act, 2000. These directions will become effective after 60 days.”

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