Toensure the safe and secure cyber world, the Director General of Police (DGP)Punjab Dinkar Gupta on Wednesday, announced slew of measures includingrecruitment of around 200 cyber crime and digital forensic experts andsetting-up of Cyber Crime Units in all the districts to deal with risingcybercrimes.
“Amidthe COVID-19, we are living more of our lives in the cyber world and manypeople using online banking and students attending online classes still don’taware about the term cybercrime,” said DGP Gupta while addressing the closingceremony of Cyber Surakhya— an online awareness campaign via webinar.
Athree-month long cyber awareness campaign was the joint initiative of thePunjab Police and Cyber Peace Foundation (CPF).
DGPGupta said that the Punjab Police is committed to ensure the safe cyber worldto the citizens especially to the women and children, who are more vulnerableto fall prey to cybercrime.
Whilethe recruitment of IT and Cyber Crime experts will be started from April 2021,the Cyber Crime Units are expected to be functional at district level in next 6to 8 months, said DGP Gupta. Notably, the Punjab Police already have astate-level Cyber Crime Cell in Mohali.
TheDGP also stressed on the need to sensitise citizens regarding new-age cyberfrauds including telephone and financial frauds, identity theft crimes(phishing), and malware detection besides assisting them to identify cyberthreats and seek redressal to mitigate the threats.
Hesaid that the Punjab Police and CPF have also conducted a survey to furtherunderstand the gaps and put into place safety and response measures to fightcybercrime.
AdvisorCPF Dr Rakshit Tandon, while divulging details said that 8505 respondentsincluding 3342 males, 5101 females and 72 others, who participated in the studydisplayed a deep understanding on cybercrime including stealing the data fromcomputer hardware (51%) as well as crimes such as hacking (51%), onlineimpersonation (39%), and online harassment (38%) while 34% respondents alsostated that conducting unlawful transactions from someone else’s account andspreading fake news (36%) also falls into the category of cybercrime.
Thesurvey, in which majority of respondents were in the age group between 10 to 20years old and are school-going further showed that about 56% of them knew howto report a cybercrime and 50% of the respondents knew that cybercrime isreported at the police station, he added.
Hesaid that interestingly, 70% of respondents were also aware that Punjab Policehad dedicated Cybercrime Cells besides Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and44% of the respondents were aware that they could seek remedy againstcybercrimes under the Information Technology Act, 2000.
ADGPCommunity Affairs Division Gurpreet Kaur Deo informed that as many as 26webinars covering diverse subjects to help citizens to understand the new agetechnologies and their pros-cons, were organised under this cyber awarenesscampaign and speakers including 22 senior police officers and 33 experts fromCyber Peace Foundation delivered lectures. She said that apart from organisingwebinars, competitions like Brain Olympics, Slogan Slam and Pant-a-Thon werealso organised for the viewers.
Meanwhile,Founder CPF Vineet Kumar said that the campaign had generated more than 20 lakhimpressions in the last 3 months with over 3 lakh unique viewers, who have watchedwebinars during the campaign period. The webinars can also be watched anytimeby visiting “Punjab Police India” page on Facebook, he added.