Petya attack spurs creation of national cyber coordination centre

Within hours of a global cyber attack, which hit operations of a terminal at India's largest container port Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), the government has swung into action to prevent such incidents in the future.

The setting up of a national cyber coordination centre (NCCC), under the IT ministry, has been put on a fast-track mode, a senior official told DNA Money.

"NCCC will be operational in next few months. It will ensure near real-time threat assessment and situational awareness, which would allow timely alerts and analysis of cyber attacks."

The government had recently announced tha launch of Cyber Swachhata Kendra, a Botnet cleaning and malware analysis centre, which offers free tools to users to clear malicious infections from their systems and works closely with internet service providers and banks to ensure a clean and safe internet ecosystem.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), under the IT ministry, operates the Botnet centre. There is also a plan to create sectoral CERTs apart from the CERTs at state level.

IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, "We have been taking proactive steps...have sent out advisories -- on the cyber attack and the malware. India is not much affected at this stage. We are keeping a close vigil on the ransomware attack that has hit Europe."

CERT-In has also issued an advsiory on the latesr ransomware attack listing out dos and don'ts. Petya ransomware is part of a new wave of cyber attacks that has hit computer servers all across Europe, locking up computer data and crippling enterprise services.

An official statement from the shipping ministry said the situation is being closely monitored and further steps to deal with the traffic situation will be initiated based on an assessment during the course of the next few days. Gulshan Rai, National Cyber Security Coordinator is proceeding to JNPT to further deal with the situation.

According to available data, in 2016, there were about 50,300 cybersecurity incidents observed such as phishing, website intrusions and defacements, virus and denial of service attacks.

The attack has come within weeks of a similar cyber attack called WannaCry.

There is a disruption in the operations of one of the private terminal operator, APM Terminals, at JNPT. It has been informed by the private terminal operator that this disruption is a consequence of a worldwide disruption being faced by them because of the cyber attack.

While the terminal operator is taking steps to address the issues disrupting the operations, it is anticipated that there could be bunching of in-bound and out-bound container cargo. The ministry of Shipping and JNPT are taking steps to ensure minimum disturbance to trade, transporters and more importantly local citizens, the statement said.

PORT DISRUPTION

• There is a disruption in the operations of one of the private terminal operators, APM Terminals, at JNPT
   
• Petya is part of a new wave of cyber attacks that has hit computer servers