The first day of the Indo-Pacific GeoIntelligence Conference 2023 ended with the plenary session on ‘Cyber Security and Data Sovereignty’. Two related but distinct concepts that have become increasingly important in the digital world. Both concepts are related because cybersecurity is essential for maintaining data sovereignty. A breach in cybersecurity can result in the theft or loss of sensitive data, which can compromise a country’s or organization’s ability to control and regulate that data. The session discussed the measures to be taken to protect systems and networks, detect, and respond to cyber threats.
Lt General (Dr) Rajesh Pant, PVSM, AVSM, VSM (Retd), National Cyber Security Coordinator at the National Security Council Secretariat, stated that in this new era, before every attack there is a cyberattack. He said that we should use the term ‘cybertonics’ more often. It is the combination of cyberwarfare and electronics, if hackers are able to access electronics then they move to cyberattacks.
He also talked about the threats in the supply chain in the form of malware, ransomware, and denial of service attacks. There are space security issues because of lack of policies, and lack of technologies. He pushed the need for a cybersecurity operation centre in every country.
V S Subrahmanian, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Computer Science, Northwestern University Evanston discussed cyber early warning systems. He said that 9.2% of discovered vulnerabilities and 49.46% of known vulnerabilities are used in a cyberattack before NIST releases their assessment (CVSS). He also discussed the importance of AI (artificial intelligence) in cyber defence, such as malware analysis and detection, corporate risk posture, intellectual property protection, and data breaches. The role of AI is growing in the coming years in generating and detecting phishing messages and posts, infected URLs, attack graphs, and malware detection.
Commander Mukesh Saini (Veteran), Former National Information Security Coordinator (NSCS/GOI) talked about data sovereignty as an oxymoron term. When we look at the sovereignty part, we need to look at how data is protected in our country. We need to assert data sovereignty. Data sovereignty means that data cannot be leaked from the country.
“If data is like petroleum then unless it is refined and processed, it is just a googy slippery fluid product. Therefore no pointing of claiming data sovereignty and sitting on Zeta x Zeta amount of data and not processing it for national wealth creation,” he concluded.
Vinit Goenka, Secretary, Centre for Knowledge Sovereignty, India, quoted a Sanskrit Shloka ‘Survey Bhavantu Sukhina’ and explained that happiness is important for every individual. He said that it is good to have commerce but not colonization. Technology is for humankind and should be used for the welfare of human beings. Technology cooperation and protocols should be there across borders.
Vikas Tiwari, Head of Solutions Architecture, Government Business, AWS talked about challenges in data integrity, the risk of unauthorized access, and concerns around the security of data. He said, “We are far behind in the adoption of cybersecurity. We should think about leveraging emerging technologies like generative AI or chatGPT to protect the data.”
