The Indian digital ecosystem is experiencing major changes, and the country is embracing technology to climb the financial and social ladder. One factor driving this change is telecommunication. India has witnessed unprecedented growth in the telecommunication sector in the last seven years. Ever since the launch of JIO, the Indian telecommunication system has exploded. However, there are two sides to every coin, and so is the case with telecommunication. The industry’s rapid growth has opened it to several cybersecurity vulnerabilities, posing risks to the nation’s security, critical infrastructure and user data.
On 23 January 2024, it was made public that the personal information of around 750 million Indians had been leaked. The breach leaked vital information about Indian users, such as their name, number, and, most importantly, their Aadhaar information. This isn’t the first time data on telecom users has been leaked. It happened in 2020 to BSNL and in 2021 to Vodafone Idea.
As of 2023, India has around 1.17 billion internet users, which has made the Indian telecom industry a lucrative target for cybercriminals. According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-IN), there were around 1.2 million cyberattacks in 2022 alone, and a vast number of those targeted the telecommunication sector.
According to experts, there are multiple reasons why the Indian telecommunications sector is a prime target for cybercriminals. A blaring weakness of the Indian telecommunications industry is its reliance on old and outdated infrastructure. Many telecom companies in India still use legacy systems that are not compatible with safeguarding the data and infrastructure from modern cyberattacks, which are getting more potent with every passing day. On top of that, India has a huge shortage of skilled and qualified personnel. According to NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies), India needs around 1 million cybersecurity personnel, but unfortunately, we don’t even have half of that.
Although the Indian government is crafting new policies and updating existing ones, like the National Cyber Security Policy 2013, it still needs to make robust policies and laws to eliminate any cybersecurity vulnerability. State-of-the-art encryption and multi-step verification are needed throughout the spectrum to ensure fewer cyberattacks in the telecom industry.
