India to promote research in cybersecurity: RS Prasad

India will fund and encourage research and Ph.Ds students in the area of cyber security not just from India but also from the Asia Pacific region, union minister for electronics and IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Wednesday. He was inaugurating the first ever conference of the Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team ( APCERT) in New Delhi.

The country will also give preference to cyber security products in government procurement which have been manufactured in India as part of the preferential market access policy, added Prasad. "Government will give grant of Rs. 5 crore to start-ups doing innovation in the field of cyber security," he added.

The 15th Conference of the APCERT is first ever conference to be hosted in India or any country in the South Asia region. Officials from CERT of around 20 countries attended the conference which deliberated on issues such as coordination among CERTs of different countries, rise of new kinds of cyber attacks etc.

"New technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning could be tools of huge development but also face new challenges for cyber security. How do we handle these issues, is the question," said Gulshan Rai, National Cyber Security Coordinator under the Prime Minister's Office.

During the conference, APCERT has also elected India -CERTto be a member on its steering committee, added Ajay Kumar, additional secretary of the ministry of electronics and IT.