To better equip the country in the fight against cybercrime, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday inaugurated a national cyber forensic lab and the Delhi Police’s cybercrime unit ‘CyPAD’.
The Minister said cybercrime is used by terror groups and is the “biggest threat to digital India”.
The Cyber Protection Awareness and Detection Centre (CyPAD) and the lab are both located in the same complex in Dwarka’s Sector 16 C. The national cyber forensic lab (NCFL) is part of the Union Home Ministry’s Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C).
Comprehensive facility
The CyPAD is a modern, comprehensive facility that aims to provide cyber investigation, cyber forensics, cyber safety and security-related services to the citizens as well as to police units and agencies of Delhi. Mr. Singh said they have a zero-tolerance policy towards cybercrime. He said that cybercrime is a challenge to basic policing and this facility will help curb it. Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik said: “It is the first cybercrime awareness and detection centre opened in the country. To be selected by the MHA to host the cyber forensic lab is a great moment of pride. The entire range of cyber forensic will be covered under CyPAD. We are selecting the staff on the basis of their technical qualification and their computer knowledge.”
Forensics labs
The cyber forensic labs include units likes Memory Forensics Labs, Image Enhancement Lab, Network Forensics Lab, Malware Forensics Lab, Cryptocurrency Forensics Lab, Damaged Hard Disk and Advanced Mobile Forensics Lab, said M.M. Oberoi, Special CP (Special Cell).
He added that the NCFL will help officers detect cyberfraud and in the future, the facility will prove to be an asset for the police.
“We are now equipped with technology to recover data from damaged hard disks, cryptocurrency analysis, malware forensic and data can be retrieved from 33,000 kinds of mobile models available in the market. Cyberexperts will train our staff,” said Mr. Patnaik.
Mr. Singh visited the various labs and saw demonstrations that showed off the capabilities of the Cyber Simulation Training and Open Source Threat Analytics. During the event, he also saw the demonstration of the technology used to check the authenticity of the video and crop images of suspects from the low-quality videos.
The inaugural function also witnessed participation from academic and technical institutions such as IIT-Delhi, National Law University, DTU, NSIT, etc.
The event was also attended by Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal.
