Cybersecurity, a $70 billion industry

Bengaluru: “Cybercriminals are now using ransomware to make money. This malware blocks access to a computer system until money is paid. It has proved to be an exceptionally lucrative business. Hackers can also exploit wearable devices. For example, they can hack smart watches to track hand movements and judge the pin code the user entered into an ATM,” said Dr K. Nayak, retired Director General, Micro Electronic Devices, DRDO.

He said that India witnessed 50,000 cybersecurity incidents in 2015, but most of them went unreported. More than 26,000 websites were defaced and 91 lakh infected systems were detected.

Without security and protection techniques, software-based systems at the heart of medical informatics, digital rights management, voting machines, power distribution systems, transportation and financial systems are vulnerable to attacks from hackers and foreign intelligence agencies.

At the 7th International Summer School on Information Security and Protection (ISSISP), the first of its kind five-day workshop starting Wednesday, inaugurated at Amrita University, Bengaluru campus, the speakers said that cybersecurity is a $70 billion industry worldwide with a lot of scope in India. The rise of Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud storage has created a host of new threats, they said.

However, new technologies such as cloud-enabled security, behavioural analysis and machine learning have emerged to tackle hackers, making it difficult for them to bypass detection.