With Bengaluru registering nearly three-fourths of the cybercrimes among all metro cities in the country, the city police will soon be armed with “Cyberspace”, a centre for excellence for cyber security. Modelled on “Cyberdome” of Kerala Police, the centre will come up in Public Private Partnership (PPP).
“Bengaluru is the IT capital of the country, and Bengaluru City Police is leading in the adoption of technology in the country. We also register the maximum number of cybercrimes in the country, and going ahead, we see this only rising further. So we will set up a centre of excellence within the city police with an aim to stay ahead of the curve, in fighting cybercrimes,” said Bengaluru Police Commissioner B. Dayananda.
The centre “Cyberspace” will be housed within the police commissioner’s office and will have personnel from both city police and experts from the private sector.
“The Centre will act as a Research and Development (R&D) wing for all technological needs of the city police, especially in fighting cybercrimes. The Centre will work on issues like the adoption of Artificial Intelligence to see patterns in cybercrimes and digital forensics and work to plug holes in the systems to prevent cybercrimes, among other issues. The Centre will also assist the City Police in complex investigations involving technology like cryptocurrency frauds, among others,” explained Raman Gupta, Additional Commissioner (Administration), Bengaluru City Police.
Kerala Police started Cyberdome in 2017 and is now regarded as a model institution, which is being adapted in Bengaluru as well.
“We are in talks with the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) and other Information Technology giants in the city for the project. They have shown interest and we will soon finalise the modalities,” Mr. Gupta said.
The State police had also proposed a Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC), which made it to the budget presented by then chief minister Basavaraj Bommai in February 2023, with an allocation of ₹20 crore, but was later dropped in the subsequent budget.
A senior official said that while Cyberspace would be a great addition to the city and state police to fight cyber crimes, a CSOC was also needed to counter and respond to cyber attacks in real-time. “Despite Bengaluru being the IT capital of the country and the most susceptible to cybercrimes and attacks, we are far behind states like Kerala, Odisha and Maharashtra in building institutional infrastructure to respond to these threats,” the official lamented.
