Home minister Amit Shah called for multilateral cooperation to share real-time information on cyber threats and develop cyber resilience in an increasingly connected world, calling the transformation of security challenges from "dynamite to metaverse" and "hawala to cryptocurrency" as well as cybercrimes involving virtual assets, darknet, and "toolkit" misinformation campaigns concerns the entire world.
Speaking at the G20 conference in Gurgaon on "Crime and Security in the age of NFTs, AI, and Metaverse," Shah mentioned how many nations have experienced cyberattacks, with the World Bank projecting losses of almost $5. 2 trillion between 2019 and 2023. Stating that no country or organisation can combat cyber threats in isolation, Shah, at the event attended by 900 delegates from member countries, nine guest nations and organisations like Interpol etc, urged all nations to rise above geographical boundaries and fight “borderless” online crimes like cyber-terror, online radicalisation, sale of critical personal data and ‘toolkit-based’ misinformation campaigns, as also the growing tendency to target critical information, digital public infrastructure and financial systems.
The union home minister called upon the G-20 mechanism to bring uniformity in laws of member countries to counter digital crimes. “An integrated and stable approach to cyber security policies will facilitate interoperability, increase trust in information sharing and reduce the agency protocols and resources gaps,” he said.
The home minister sought greater coordination among cyber agencies of all countries in reporting and taking action on cyber incidents as well as investigating cross-border cyber crimes through joint efforts to build a "peaceful, secure, deterrent, and open information and communication technology" after piloting a slew of cyberspace initiatives in India to prevent, detect, fight, and investigate various types of cyber-threats and attacks.