What is Defence Cyber Agency?

Established in the month of September of 2018, the “Defence Cyber Agency” or the DCA is a “tri-service command” (integration of all the major branches of the armed forces) of the Indian Armed Forces. The agency id headquartered in New Delhi and is responsible for handling the cyber security threats related to national security. Being a tri-service command, it draws its personnel from army, navy and air force services. The head of the agency, usually a two-star rank officer, is answerable to the Chief of Defence Staff of CDS.

The Agency and its personnel are generally involved in hacking into servers and networks of an enemy state or an organization that is posing threat to national security, mounting surveillance tools, setting up honeytraps and preventing the same on this side, decoding of encrypted firewalls, recovering from any attack committed on our network and retrieving data from any storage.

Similarly, the Home Ministry has a division by the name Cyber and Information Security Division or C&IS, that deals with the matters of internal and civilian security, cybercrime, and are responsible for the implementation of the “National Information Security Policy and Guidelines” or “NISPG”.