Shri Dayanidhi Maran, Minister of Communications & Information Technology while speaking at the seminar on “Cyber Crime: Today and Tomorrow”, organised by NASSCOM, on 12 July 2006, hinted towards the coming amendments to Information Technology Act, 2000. The programme also included Felicitation of India Cyber Cop Award winner and Release of the Cyber Crime Case Book at the hands of the Hon'ble Minister. Press released issued by Ministry is given below:

Press Release by Minister of Communications & Information Technology (Dated 12 July 2006):

"The Information Technology Act, 2000 is being amended with a view to provide legal frame work for certain types of cyber crimes such as data theft, transmission of images, video voyeurism, etc. The major cyber crimes reported in India are denial of services, defacement of websites, SPAM, computer virus and worms, pornography, cyber squatting, cyber stalking and phishing. The amended Act will further envisage to appoint an examiner to examine the digital evidence and render all necessary assistant to the Police authorities, as well as to the courts. Due to lack of training of the Police officials in the field, many of the cyber crimes in the country are booked under Indian Penal Code, rather than Information Technology Act. This was stated by Shri Dayanidhi Maran, Minister of Communications & Information Technology while speaking at the seminar on “Cyber Crime: Today and Tomorrow”, organised by NASSCOM, here today.

Speaking further on the theme of the subject, Shri Maran said that while the computers are used to commit acts of blue-collared crimes such as pornography, threatening e-mail, defamation, etc., the same computers are made the target of crime in the form of viruses, worms, industrial espionage, software piracy and hacking of websites, etc. Websites with the addresses – co.in and gov.in mostly fall prey to the targets as about 1400 Indian websites have been attacked in the first half of this year alone. The intrusion originates both from within the country and outside the country, Shri Maran said. 55% per cent of such threats are from outside, he added.

The Minister further said that the Government on its part has taken a number of initiatives. Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) is operational and provides necessary assistance to prevent security breaches. It also regularly monitors cyber security scenario in the country to protect critical information infrastructure. It has proposed to impart training in the field from the 3rd week of August. The Minister lauded the NASSCOM’s initiative of creating an industry-wise Registry of IT professionals. Shri Kiran Karnik, President NASSCOM and Shri Pradeep Udhas, Executive Director, KPMG India also addressed the Seminar."