India – Experts Advise “Change your passwords more often”

The hacking group called Legion now poses the biggest threat in the cyber space. It has recently hack into several servers, including that of the Apollo Hospitals, and releasing thousands of confidential mails. In fact, it has also hacked the twitter accounts of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, liquor baron Vijay Mallya and ex-IPL commissioner Lalit Modi. Against this backdrop, and given the thrust of the State and Central governments on cashless transactions, the obvious question on everyone’s mind is –

Is it safe?

Unfortunately, the answer from experts is No.

India is not yet ready to be a cashless economy as it has to first master the relevant technology to counter the threats and challenges posed by cyber criminals, opined experts at the National Conference on Mapping India’s National Security Challenges, organised by the Center for Human and Security Studies here on Tuesday.

According to Cyber expert, Ram Mohan, from the CID, explained that banking servers in India are not safe enough. “Even free WiFi zones are strictly not advisable. All the protocols of WiFi zones are compromised and available on internet and hence, easy to hack,” he pointed out.

Ram Mohan also noted that skimming is unavoidable as it is happening at the merchant level in markets. What is the way out then? Keep changing passwords and pin numbers to avoid cyber threats, he suggested. Preferably, the passwords should be a mix of letters and numbers. Director of eSF Labs A Anil, who also attended a session on cyber security, explained how hackers operate and why they hack in the first place. According to him, the ongoing transformation into cashless society using e-PoS machines is a risky proposition.