Reported cases of cybercrime up 20% to 11,592 in 2015

NEW DELHI: Reported cases of cybercrime in the country stood at 11,592 in 2015, up 20 per cent from the previous year, Parliament was informed today.

"As per the data maintained by National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), a total of 5,693, 9,622 and 11,592 cybercrime cases were registered during the years 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively, showing a rise of 69 percent during 2013 to 2014 and 20 percent during 2014 to 2015," Minister of State for Electronics and IT P P Chaudhary said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

He added that a total of 1,203 cases, 749 cases and 792 cases were registered under publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act and/or depicting children in sexually explicit act etc in electronic form (Section 67, 67A, 67B) of Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 during 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively.


Further, as per data provided by NCRB, a total of 62 and 117 cases were registered under violation of privacy under cyber crimes (section 66E of IT Act) during 2014 and 2015, respectively, he said.

Citing data from Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), Chaudhary said a total number of 1,122, 534 and 617 phishing incidents were handled during 2014, 2015 and 2016 (upto October), respectively.

"With the innovation of technology and rise in usage of cyber space for businesses, the cyber attacks breaching data and privacy (such as phishing and identity theft etc) continue to occur in the country as elsewhere in the world," he said.

He added that such phishing attacks target users to trick them to divulge information such as online credentials.

Chaudhary said the government has taken a number of steps to address these issues, including regularly conducting cyber security mock drills in government and critical sectors.

A sum of Rs 500 crore has also been allocated for cyber security programme, he added.