The government of India has launched the “Make In India”, “Swachh Bharat” and “Digital India” initiatives with a holistic approach towards all areas.
Be it cleaning our environment (Swach Bharat) to launching our own rockets, we are making great progress in all areas of technology.
Well, with power comes responsibility.
With the advent of 4G and 3G data, our venture into the world of Internet is growing every day. We have over 1 billion mobile users and 30% of Indians use the internet; we need to protect our devices and data.
The Windows operating system and android software are the prime targets for the cyber-attacks. The malware attacks have doubled over 8 billion, according to the Dell Security Annual Threat Report.
So what products do we need to protect our systems from viruses, malware attacks, bot net attacks, phishing attacks and much more?
We need a good antivirus software, firewall software and anti-malware software. The government of India has taken a commendable initiative and has set up the CERT-In: The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team.
The Indian Government has launched the ambitious “Cyber Swachhta Kendra” as a part of the Digital India enterprise.
The “Cyber Swachhta Kendra” is a centre for monitoring the collaborating computers, mobile systems for botnet, virus and malware infections. If any system is found infected, it will alert the user and direct them to free bot/virus/ malware removal tools.
This “Cyber Swachhta Kendra” aims to combine the Clean India and the Digital India initiatives, by cleaning up the internet ecosystem. This centre is allocated a budget of 90 crores, spread over 5 years.
Over 58 Internet Service Providers (ISP) and 13 banks have signed up for the security initiative. From individual users, universities, schools and financial sectors, everyone can make use of this set up to protect themselves.
The “Cyber Swachhta Kendra” provides the following tools in collaboration with QuickHeal and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC).
We have provided a brief overview of the free tools that are offered here:
Bot Removal Tool: The Cyber Swachhta Kendra offers the free tool of QuickHeal for removing any bots infecting your system.
USB Pratrodh: This desktop application, provided by the CDAC will monitor the usage of removable storage devices like the pen-drive, external hard-drives, cell phone storage and others.
AppSamvid: This desktop application by the CDAC approves the executable from a pre-approved set of whitelisted applications to run in your device.
M-Kavach: This is a comprehensive security solution for your cell-phones. It protects the mobile phones from virus attacks, spurious SMSs, malicious usage of data and Bluetooth and protects your personal data like photos, contacts and mails.
Browser JSGuard: This is a browser extension from the CDAC, which will protect the user from malicious Html and Javascripts from running on their browser and prevents the user from opening spurious web pages based on collected information. This comes in two versions, one for Firefox and another version for Chrome.
You can learn more about these tools and download them here:
By downloading & using these free antivirus tools provided by the government, we can protect ourselves from the cyber-attacks that are increasing day by day.
Due to demonetization and the Government’s emphasis on digital transactions, the mobile payment apps of banks and start-ups alike are targeted by hackers from China, Pakistan, US, Russia, Singapore, Romania, etc.
The number of average threats/vulnerabilities per day has increased from 2 lakhs to 6 lakhs in the demonetization period, according to this report.
Using these free apps we can protect our sensitive data like photos, credit card details, contact details and messages, emails, etc. safe from the hands of hackers.