Page 55 - PR COMMUNICATION AGE July - December 2020

on 30th May, 2019 for various commercial banks to enable and to notify, enable cleaning and securing systems of end
them to assess their emergency incident response users, so as to prevent further infections. By providing free
preparedness and the second was Cyber Crisis Table Top tools and security best practices for citizens the Cyber
Exercise for State Government officials of Assam on 22nd Swachhta Kendra helps users to securely carry out digital
& 23rd July 2019. payments, secure their personal computers, broadband
routers, mobile phones etc. thereby enhancing citizens trust
International Cyber Security Exercises in ICT while ensuring a cleaner and safer Digital India. At
CERT-In participated in the APCERT drill 2019 on 31st July present, CSK is covering 94% of the subscriber base for
2019 which was conducted with the objective to test the notifications on botnet/malware infection systems.
response capability of leading Computer Security Incident
Response Teams (CSIRT) within the Asia Pacific economies. Currently, 214 organizations from multiple sectors like
The theme of this year’s APCERT Drill was “Catastrophic Telecom (ISPs), Finance and Insurance, Stocks, Transport,
Silent Draining in Enterprise Network.” Power, Academia, Government and Oil & Gas are also
collaborating and being benefited by using CSK services.
CERT-In participated in ASEAN CERTs Incident Response Drill
(ACID), 2019 which was conducted on 4th September 2019, During the year 2018-19 (January 2018 – October 2019),
with the objectives of strengthening cyber security 516 types of botnet/malware were tracked and reported
preparedness of ASEAN member States and Dialogue to collaborating ISPs/organizations. Malware/Botnet
partners in handling cyber incidents and reinforce regional infections include Bots affecting desktop systems, IoT bots,
coordination drills to test incident response capabilities. This Ransomware, cryptocurrency miners, information stealing
year the theme of the drill was ‘“Combat Evolving Cyber Trojans, banking trojans etc.
Threats with Good Cyber Hygiene”.
Free Bot Removal Tool (FBRT) is being regularly updated
CERT-In participated in “Organization of The Islamic with signatures/detections for recent botnet/malware
Cooperation – Computer Emergency Response Teams (OIC- observed to enable cleaning of infected systems A Total of
CERT) Drill” on 17th September 2019. This year theme of 10.5 Lakh numbers of Free Bot Removal Tool (FBRT)
the exercise was ‘The Rise of Malware Intelligence’. downloaded till October 2019. Further, systems with
vulnerable services were tracked and reported to
Ethiopia Table Top Exercise: CERT-In conducted a organizations along with remedial measures.
multilateral table top exercise in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
There were over 70 participants in this workshop from “Cyber Swachhta Kendra” was awarded as one of 51 “Gems
across the African union, developed and developing of Digital India 2018” in June 2018.
countries as well as the industry and academia. The theme
of the exercise was incident response in a cross-sector and “Cyber Swachhta Kendra” was also awarded “SKOCH Order-
crossborder scenario. of-Merit and Gold Award” for Cost Effective Cyber Security
Model in the month of December 2018.
Cyber Swachhta Kendra (Botnet Cleaning and
Malware Analysis Centre) CERT-In and its project “Cyber Swachhta Kendra” awarded
The “Cyber Swachhta Kendra” is operated by the Indian for “Special Recognition in Cyber Security” in CISO MAG
Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) as part of AWARDS INDIA 2019.
the Government of India’s Digital India initiative under the
Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). CERT-In Threat Intelligence eXchange-Proactive
The Cyber Swachhta Kendra (CSK) which was launched on Threat Intelligence Sharing Platform
21 February 2017 is a citizen centric service provided by CERT-In Threat Intel eXchange (CTIX) equips the
CERT-In, which extends the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s vision stakeholder analysts with format agnostic, realtime,
of Swachh Bharat to the Cyber Space. Its goal is to create reliable, verified tactical threat intelligence based on the
a secure cyber space by detecting botnet infections in India industry and location of the organization. CTIX facilitates

"The key to a good marriage: laugh together, cry together, strive together. Do everything together."

PR COMMUNICATION AGE July - December 2020 55