Why Kerala’s Cyberdome project is an idea which must be replicated at the national level

Project Head: Manoj Abraham IPS, Inspector General of Police & Nodal Officer, Cyberdome Range Office,Thiruvanathapuram

In the rapidly growing and changing digital world, the investigation of cyber crimes and ensuring cyber security for citizens is one of the most challenging area for the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). Since today’s cyber-crimes, involve the use of most modern and sophisticated technologies, as well as anonymity over the internet, it becomes extremely difficult, for the police, to investigate these kinds of crimes. The cyber criminals now work in a border-less environment, with legal systems of multiple jurisdictions. To make things worse, cyber crime has been evolving at an astonishing rate. Unfortunately, the police system is not equipped to take a pivotal role in cyber crime investigations and prevention of cyber crimes.

Taking into account the broader impact of cyber crimes and challenges in the cyber space, Kerala Police initiated this Project for the establishment of a Hi-tech Centre for Cyber Security and Innovations at the Technopark Campus, Trivandrum, Kerala.

Cyberdome is a technological research and development centre of Kerala Police Department, conceived as a cyber centre of excellence in cyber security, as well as technology augmentation for effective policing. It envisages as a high tech public-private partnership centre of collaboration for different stakeholders in the domain of cyber security and handling of cyber crimes in a proactive manner. One of the main objectives of the Cyberdome is to prevent cyber crimes through developing a cyber threat resilient ecosystem in the state to defend against the growing threat of cyber attacks by synergizing with other departments and nodal agencies of the state. Cyberdome makes a collective coordination among the Government departments and agencies, academia, research groups, non-profitable organizations, individual experts from the community, ethical hackers, private organizations, and other law enforcement agencies in the country with an aim of providing a safe and secure cyber world for each and every citizen in the state. The primary objective of Cyberdome is to prevent cyber crimes and ensure that our cyber resources are secured.

The importance of collaboration
To effectively tackle cybercrime, adequate cross–border provisions are required and international cooperation and mutual assistance within law enforcement, and between the other agencies, needs to be enhanced. Governments cannot contain these cyber threats single-handedly through domestic measures alone. Neither should governments be left to grapple with this danger on their own any longer, as the expertise and skill to combat these cyber threats are largely dispersed across the globe. Hence the solution is that to create collaboration with private sector and academia to conform rapidly changing technology world.

National cyber security policy also affirms in developing effective public – private partnerships models. Active partnership with the private sector is essential, not only to share intelligence and evidence, but also in the development of technical tools and measures for law enforcement to prevent online criminality. The academic community also has an important part to play in the research and development of such measures.

Cyberdome is a pioneering project as it brings together Government Departments, Law Enforcement Agencies, Industry, Academia, International Organizations and experts from the public domain for collaborating on cyber security to enhance the capabilities of the state in dealing with cyber threats as well as to provide security to the Digital Assets of the state.

Law enforcement agencies can provide real case based scenarios and requirements for research and implement new products as well as services, that will provide benefit for all stakeholders to make their infrastructure secure. An online cyber crime reporting system will be hosted to report online crimes as well as to report vulnerabilities of the websites, Apps, Services as a responsible informer. Cyberdome collaborates with around 10 national and International organisations, more than 500 IT professionals working around the globe, Nodal Officers from all major banks, around 3 Universities, more than 750 odd students and 250 Mobile Technicians within its fold. All these individuals are working on an online platform, free of cost, for preventing cyber crimes, spreading awareness on cyber security, creating digital solutions for better service delivery and in general for creating a safe cyber world.

Tackling threats proactively
Analysis is the cornerstone of all modern intelligence-led law enforcement activities and critical to all cyber intelligence purposed. Cyberdome analytical capabilities are based on advanced technology adjusted to the needs of law enforcement.

As law enforcement agencies, the police are facing ‘‘real case based scenarios’’ and gaps in research and development. The inadequacy of expertise to deal with the darker side of the exponentially expanding Information Technology is a major roadblock for the Police in India. Acquiring such expertise by recruiting manpower is not a viable option too.
Cyberdome envisages to take proactive measures against the evolving cyber threats. In this regard cyberdome regularly conducts VAPT in the Government as well as the private domains and report the same and also gives mitigation steps. The secure coding workshops being conducted by the Cyberdome equips the developers and IT admins of organisations to develop hack proof and secure websites to a large extent. Cyberdome in collaboration with the RBI, Banks, payment gateways and other wallet groups had taken measures to tackle the financial fraud and had been a great success.

Cyberdome has also started a ransomware school to understand, analyse and mitigate ransomware infections, create standard operating procedures to deal with ransomware, creating awareness among the public as well as government departments about ransomware and its precautionary steps. Some other effective steps include bursting of child pornographic groups, awareness campaigns for school children and for the general public, awareness campaigns through mass media and social media, Social media surveillance etc.

Major Achievements
• Performed VAPT (Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing) on more than 100+ sites and reported their vulnerabilities
• Developed advanced Social Media lab for analytics, Cyber intelligence & monitoring Darknets.
• A software called Privacy Tracker has been developed in partnership model for preventing piracy of films
• Defaced or removed around 250+ child porn pages/ porn sites and initiated action against the culprits
• Ransomware School started to understand, analyse and mitigate ransomware infections
• Developed a malware analysis lab to analyse the behaviour of malware & its preventive measures
• Developed a SOC System(Security Operations Centre) for protecting Government digital infrastructure
• Child Safety awareness program for students, parents & Teachers named- KID GLOVE- implemented throughout the state
• Conducted around 18 workshops and 22 hackathons for police cyber training
• Conducted 80 awareness events/ workshops throughout the state, for the public
• Intensive project to prevent child pornography over social media platforms
• Developed geospatial application to pin point the location based on mobile cell data
• Prevention of Online Financial Fraud in association With RBI through a 24X7 OTP fraud Monitoring system
• 21 MoUs signed with International and National cyber security agencies.