Cyber Warfare: Contours and Concepts Conference on Cyber Security

New Delhi: The event's chief guest was Lt. General (Retd.) Dr. Rajesh Pant. The conference began with a welcome address by the guest of honor, Shri Kailash Vijayvargiya. India’s eminent dignitaries were present to create awareness and share their ideas and experiences on cyber security. Some of the eminent speakers who graced the event were:

• Chief guest Lt. General (Retd.) Dr. Rajesh Pant – PVSM, AVSM, Ph.D.

• Guest of Honour – Kailash Vijayvargiya, National General Secretary, Bhartiya Janta Party

• Former Chief of Naval Staff Admiral (Retd.) R.K. Dhowan – PVSM, AVSM, YSM and Chairperson of SAMDeS

• Rear Admiral Mohit Gupta – VSM, Director General Defence Cyber Agency

• Shri Khushhal Kaushik – Founder & CEO of Lisianthus Tech

• Brigadier Ramesh Balan – VSM

• Sean Greven – Product Manager for the Keysight Cyber Security Operations Platform

• Prayukth K. V. – Head of Marketing, Sectrio

• Sandeep Aurora, Director – Government Affairs

• Mr. Kinshuk De – Head Cyber Incident Response, TCS

• Jitender Mehta – Director Oracle India

• Lt. General AS Lamba – PVSM, AVSM, Ph.D. (Retd) Former VCOAS

• Ambassador Dr. Anup K Mudgal – IFS (Retd) Former High Commissioner to Mauritius

• H. E. Freddy Svane – Ambassador of Denmark

• Deepak Kumar Vishwakarma – Director Ministry of Defence

• Dr. Amar Kumar Pandey IPS (Retd) – DGP Government of Karnataka

• Dr. Narayan Prasad Padhy – Director MNIIT, Jaipur

• Sandeep Mishra – Head North & East India region, SAARC region for Keysight.

• Col Suhail Zaidi (Retd) Head – CII-Tata Communications Centre for Digital Transformation.

• Shri Kanishk Gaur Cybersecurity Expert, Founder – India future foundation.

• Dr. S. K. Verma – Chairman Lisianthus Tech.

Cyber warfare and cybercrime have become challenging for security agencies and economies worldwide. The conference created awareness about cyber warfare and cybercrime and discussed strategies to mitigate the associated risks.

Admiral R.K. Dhowan initiated the conference with welcome remarks to all the eminent speakers and guests. He focused on how cybercrime threatened India’s national security and recapitulated some of his experiences from his remarkable career.

Shri Kailash Vijayvargiya, lit the lamp and addressed the audience. In his address, he quoted some real-life examples regarding the plight of illiterate people who are very vulnerable to cybercrime. He emphasized that enforcing stringent cyber laws can safeguard citizens against cybercrime.  

Rear Admiral Mohit Gupta, shared his valuable views and stated that cyberoperations would likely be a critical component of future conflicts as nations and non-state actors seek to gain a strategic advantage over their adversaries. Cyberattacks has crippled critical infrastructure and disable communication and logistics systems. To prevent such a critical cybercrime scenario, he suggested that using artificial intelligence and machine learning could make cyber operations even more potent, allowing attackers to automate their attacks and target vulnerabilities more effectively.

His Excellency Freddy Svane, and Dr. Anup K Mudgal, emphasized trust and cooperation of the nations to combat cybercrime because there are no boundaries in the digital world.

Lt. General (Retd.) Dr. Rajesh Pant highlighted the quote of honorable prime minister Sri Narendra Modi, “I dream of a digital India, where cyber security is an integral part of our national security.” He threw light on National Cyber Space and National Sovereign Cyber Space. Differentiating the two, he said that total Cyber Space within the nation over which we have jurisdiction is a National Sovereign Cyberspace. The cyberspace outside our nation, which does not fall under our jurisdiction but deals with our data, is national cyberspace. He said that lack of attribution, international laws, and geo-political driven pathways are aiding cybercriminals. 

Shri Khushhal Kaushik reinforced that a lack of awareness of cybercrime can make us a victim of cyber-attack. He elaborated that the script kiddies, with the help of Chinese applications, extort money and manipulate our data without our consent and knowledge. The government of India has banned such Chinese applications, which use our data and funds against our national interest and weaken our economy. He described Zero Trust Architecture as a powerful strategy and framework to prevent cyber warfare and crimes but should be developed and adopted indigenously.  It is built to enhance the national security framework to continuously scrutinize users accessing the data to mitigate risks and identify unauthorized access. 

The conference concluded with General (Retd.) A.S. Lamba’s vote of thanks to all the eminent speakers and guests and summarized major outputs from the stellar professionals. He warned and guided the audience simultaneously on how obliviously we transfer data by merely giving away a minute command to Alexa in our day-to-day lives. Dr. S.K. Verma concluded by saying that while we develop a national cyber security strategy, it is equally imperative to enhance cyber warfare capabilities. The enhancement would require technological and organizational enhancements, which could be employed for cyber offense, cyber defense, cyber deterrence, or a combination of these.