Bangalore has transitioned from a “City of Gardens” and a Pensioners Paradise to the Silicon Valley and the tech capital of India. It symbolised all that is modern, tech enabled, transformative, churns huge wealth and positioned India into the front runners in the IT world. The IT boom made Bangalore a global brand, that if India tech can delivered in an effective manner it would be Bangalore. Bangalore became both a tech gateway and also a showcase for the world to see.
It was thus presumed that the tech expertise will have a horizontal expansion and would also develop the capability to negate the negative footprints which IT was bound to create. This was visible pretty early in the journey of mass scale adoption of technology. It was expected that other organs of the state who were mandated to handle the negative impact of tech, what we call term as cyber crime today, could gain competence, expertise and would be provided with the financial and technical wherewithal to keep its own house in order and also lead the nation in this field.
Fast forward one and a half or two decades and today we are in a situation wherein Karnataka sees hundreds of cybercrime cases in one day, with Bangalore reporting the most. The moot question is whether this has been happening after putting in Bangalore’s tech might in a collaborative mode with the government and the police or it has been a lone furrow for the police, with the frugal resources at its command. Some small capital investments here and there, might look impressive in silos, but are not even a patch to the requirements of the day. What about the technical resources at their command, besides the tech infra. It has little to do with the IT industry.
The simple question to be answered without blinking an eyelid, does it match silicon valley tech standards and delivery in the prevention and detection of it. The answer is capital NO. When we talk of international expertise exchange, transfer, or of training and capacity building, the less said the better. Intelligence sharing is by exception. Police are reporting a surge of cases involving a sophisticated phone scam that combines fake courier calls, mobile phone takeovers, fraudulent payment requests and similar such scams. None of these are new now, but Bangaloreans remain lameducks. A large part of these crimes are happening and not even being detected because we have not risen to the occasion.
AVOIDABLE CYBER CRIMES ARE THE STATE’S LIABILITY, OSTRICHES GOING THE TECH WAY.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening .