National Cyber Security Coordination Centre to fully secure country cyber space says I.T. Minister Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad.

The Union Minister for Information & Communication Technology and Law & Justice, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that the action has been initiated to set up National Cyber Security Coordination Centre (NCCC) to fully secure the country’s cyber space and strengthen the country’s cyber security posture.

Addressing the Regional Editors’ Conference at Chennai today, the Minister said that the government is fully aware of the possible threats to country’s cyber security and assured that NCCC will ensure near real time threat assessment and situational awareness that will help in analysis and generation of timely alerts and periodic reports.

He said that the NCCC Project has been approved for implementation and technical approach and implementation plan has been prepared.

The Minister said that a massive training programme will be undertaken to train the police officers and personnel at police stations across the country. Apart from the police, the important organs of the government including the judicial officers will be sensitized adequately on this issue.

Shri Prasad said that the Government is committed to make India a digitally empowered society. He said that localization of content is amongst the top priorities of the government to ensure that the common man is empowered to take full advantage of digital facilities being expanded in all walks of life.

Quoting the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in his speech, the Minister said that digital connect is integral to good governance. Giving a digital profile of India he said that the country boasts of 104 crore Aadhaar users, 103 crore mobile phones and 40 Crore internet users which may soon touch the mark of 50 crore internet users.

Giving examples of E-empowerment of common people, Shri Prasad said that even rural areas are now taking full advantage of facilities being provided by E-Commerce.

He said that Department of Posts has been roped in actively to serve rural areas through E-Commerce. He said that under the Digital India Land records Modernization Programme, Land records in 31 States and UTs have been computerized.

He also said that Government is determined to connect 2.50 Lakh village Panchayats with high speed optical fibre network. He said that already over 57 thousand village panchayats have been covered with about 1.32 Lakh kms of optical fibre network during last two years.

He pointed out that only 308 kms of Optical Fibre was laid between 2011 to 2014.

The Minister said that India Post Payment Bank to be rolled out by April, 2017, will take banking at doorsteps of the common man. It will use the vast network of 1.5 lakh Post Offices for providing banking facilities to citizens.

Giving the figures of phenomenal growth of E-transactions in the country, he said that whereas there were about 66 lakh transactions per day in 2013 which rose to 97 lakh transactions in 2014, to 1.85 crore in 2015 and to over two crore transactions per day in 2016.

The two-day Regional Editors’ Conference is being attended by senior journalists from the States of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka besides the UT of Lakshadweep.