A bitter reality that stares the government’s digital push in the face is cybercrime. So when NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, while addressing a session at Jaipur Literature Festival 2017, made the statement that cash machines would become completely irrelevant in India within three years, it called for a lucid explanation.
India has a dismal record of resolution of cybercrime. According to data published by the National Crime Records Bureau, in 2015, more than 60 per cent of cases, that is, 11,789 cases out of 19,423 reported, were pending investigation at the end of that year. And the motive-wise classification of cases showed that greed/financial gain and fraud/illegal gain – with 3,855 and 1,119 cases respectively – topped the table in numerical terms.
Against this backdrop, it appears far-fetched to imagine that the country could shift to a less-cash economy safely and in quick time. Internet penetration in India stood at 34.8 per cent as of July 1, 2016. That was equal to 1,326,801,576 people. If the majority of the remaining 65.2 per cent of the population, too, were to come into the digital fold, will the security agencies be able to ensure safety for the hard-earned money of many millions of people?
In a recent case reported from Govandi in Maharashtra earlier this month, a logistics company stated that it had lost $16,000, which converts to about eleven lakh rupees, following a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack, the jargon for a form of cyberattack involving unauthorised access and tampering with digital communication between two parties.
The case involved the logistics company’s foreign client which claimed it had made advance payment for a service into an overseas account as was ‘requested by the transporter itself’. The said communication was investigated and it revealed that the e-mail account of the company had been compromised and the money transferred to an account overseas as suspected. But the perpetrators are still far from being brought to book and the money still a long way from being repatriated.
According to one report, the number of MitM cases rose from 19 in 2015 to 26 in 2016, which was a 37 per cent per cent rise. And if the victims in the cases cumulatively lost Rs4.33 crore in 2015, the corresponding losses in 2016 were Rs14.54 crore. That is a huge threat facing victims.
Examples of countries such as Kenya are being cited in support of the move to digitise transactions. The African nation, which is less banked and is less advanced technologically, conducts 50-60 per cent of its financial transactions over mobile phones. It is hoped that India, too, would witness an exponential growth in cashless economy once telecom majors fall in to support digital banking.
The UIDAI is promoting Aadhaar-Enabled Payment System (AEPS), which relies on fingerprinting technology. Officials of the authority, such as its CEO AB Pandey, aver that AEPS is much more secure than any other digital mode of transaction, both in terms of technology and process. According to Pandey, biometric data gets encrypted and leaves little scope for misuse.
It must be noted that criminals have constantly found newer ways to beat systems put in place and there is no guarantee that all would be safe in the less-cash economy. Diligent spadework is essential before the government promotes digital transactions. It is better to be safe than sorry.
The experience the US has had with Edward Snowden and US presidential elections have laid bare the perils of heavy dependence on the internet. US citizens are now seriously considering less usage of the internet in critical spheres of governance and communication. India, too, must not blindly follow the path of digitisation and take ample precautions before going ahead with the process.
