Rajnath calls upon police personnel to upgrade their skills to tackle cyber crime

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday said that cyber crimes pose a challenge to traditional policing and called upon police personnel to enhance their skills to tackle threats posed from the cyber world. "If we have to build public trust in a digital world, then we will have to bear zero tolerance towards cybercrime," he said after inaugurating the Cyber Prevention, Awareness and Detection Centre (CyPAD) of Delhi Police and the National Cyber Forensic Lab of the Home Ministry.

The Home Minister said in this era of internet and computers, there exists an aspect of cybercrime whether it is cyber cheating or fraud, women harassment or terror recruitment which needs to be strongly addressed. "Internet is a platform not only aiding the evolution of social media but also crucial to online banking, shopping and remotely operated systems in the industry. We have to develop institutional mechanisms for undertaking a timely assessment to challenges in cyberspace and securing it for the common man," he said.

He said the ministry has initiated several steps in the last more than four years to deal with cyber crimes including setting up of an Inter-Ministerial Committee on Phone Frauds. "For effectively tackling challenges to cyberspace, we need an institutional mechanism at the national level involving the private sector also and coordination at the national and international levels," he said.

The Home Ministry has set up an Expert Group for a detailed study and initiated creation of the Cyber Crime Coordination Centre which will deal with cyber forensics, cyber investigation, cyber research and innovation, threat analytics and cyber training. Rajnath Singh said the setting up of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (i-4C) is a step towards its implementation.

He said the CyPAD will deal with crypto-currency frauds and international tech-supported frauds. All these steps are aimed at achieving the "minimum government, maximum governance" goal set under the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said.

The Home Minister also inaugurated a Delhi Police residential block comprising 56 flats. The Delhi Police built 312 dwelling units last year and another 969 units are under construction.

(With inputs from agencies.)