Manmohan Singh to chair meet on security of government sensitive cyber domains

NEW DELHI: With government online networks facing threats from hackers, security of sensitive cyber domains will be reviewed at a high-level meeting to be chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh tomorrow which will discuss ways to counter such offensives.

The National Security Council (NSC) meeting is expected to decide on the steps to be taken to protect the country's cyber architecture and designate organisations to counter such offensives, sources said.

The NSC is also expected to designate the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) under the Defence Ministry for countering cyber offensives against the country, they said.

Defence Minister A K Antony and National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon are also expected to attend the meeting.

The NSA had recently stated that government was "in final stages" of developing capabilities for providing protection against cyber attacks.

"Government is in the process of putting in place the capabilities and the systems to deal with this archaic new world of constant and undeclared cyber threat, attack, counter-attack and defence," Menon had said, adding that "the government was preparing a whole-of-government cyber security architecture".

Several websites and networks of the government have come under attack from different hacker groups across the globe.

During the Commonwealth Games in 2010, hackers had launched over 8,000 attacks on dedicated networks of the mega event but all of them were thwarted by designated agencies.