Rakshit Tandon delivers cyber security gyaan

He began his presentation stating the rise in mobile internet usage. “This has gone up by 40% and is expected to grow at a much higher rate,” he said. “This is a figure which we can see between the age group of 14-18 year old teens. These are the kids who are the victims of typical cyber frauds; fake profiles, sexting, cyber bullying, pornography, etc,” he added.

“Several schools, NGOs and individuals and even the Government is working towards educating children and young people about the dangers of sharing information online, but often find themselves at a loss when confronted with real situations every day,” Tandon added.

Other major issues include cyber defamation, cyber stalking, email hacking, software piracy, identity hacking and misusing, to name a few.

Tandon recalled the trauma of a young boy at one of the top colleges underwent when an old picture of him, from one of his social media accounts, went viral and became the butt of unflattering comments by students. "Once it goes viral, you can't track who is sharing or sending it," he said.

Cyber frauds have increased 25-30% in the past one year alone, according to an estimate by the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO). Tandon shared a statistical figure of 24,216 sites being hacked last financial year. “Atleast 15 vulnerabilities can be found in a single site,” he said.

Another figure which he shared was that because of piracy, the software industry loses nearly 33 million dollars annually worldwide.

The eminent problem amongst businessman that Tandon stressed on is swindling of exporters using electronic methods of funds transfer. As per primary modus operandi, the hacker gains illegal access of the exporter’s email and modifies its settings.

He elaborated this with an example, “The ignorant exporter facilitates such access by clicking on any unknown sources which leads the hacker to send an email from his account which the exporter must have sent to his buyer for payment.”

“The hacker then fires an email to the buyer asking for the payment in some fake account in some other country,” he added. A syndicate siphoned off one lac euros from a exporter from Mumbai.