Cyber attacks in India can adversely impact India’s growth and worsen relations with its neighbours, a joint Assocham PwC report said.

“Cyberattacks can deliver economic blows, derail India from its projected growth trajectory and worsen relations with our neighbours, unleashing a state of anarchy,” the report said.

Citing rise in digital payments and projected growth of India’s digital economy to $1 trillion in the next 5-7 years from $270 billion at present, the report said the growth is opening up gaps, which may be exploited by the adversaries. “The number of incidents reported by the Indian Computer Emergency Response (CERT-In) was 27,482 till June 2017.

Vulnerable to attacks

“Cyber adversaries are becoming more sophisticated and resourceful. Among more than 100 countries that were hit by WannaCry, India was the third worst-affected,” the report said.

Some of the recommendations of the report to the government were: increasing focus on critical infrastructure; collaborative effort from business organisations, training students at the school-level and creation of indigenous tools for building cyber-resilient environment.