India sets up second new CERT in a year, this time for government

Seeing as India has biometric national ID, this seems like a pretty sensible idea

India has decided it needs a third computer emergency response team, to protect government digital services.

The nation already has two CERTs, in the form of CERTin which has a familiar mission to serve as a national agency for detecting and advising of new threats and Fin-CERT, added earlier this year, for its financial sector.

Now the nation has inaugurated “NIC-CERT”. The “NIC” stands for National Informatics Centre, India's e-business and e-governance organisation.

NIC's role means NIC-CERT's been given the job of protecting Indian government infrastructure. That's a rather important role given India has gone all-in on digital services, not least the Adhaar biometric identity system that records details of more than a billion people, can be used for government and private services and seldom escapes mention when juicy targets for criminals are considered. Digital services are also an important element of prime minister Narendra Modi's plan to modernise India and cut through the nation's famously dense bureaucratic red tape.

NIC-CERT's hired 30 security staff who will work alongside the 300 already employed at NIC. All have been given a mission to gather intelligence that suggests possible attacks on Indian government targets, then figuring out how to nip them in the bud. ®