The back and forth exemplifies the evolving complexity of the online world, especially when harms are involved, where multiple stakeholders have to work together and often with different approaches and mandates.

TWO KEY ministries, Information Technology and Home Affairs, are making a strong pitch for  the ownership of Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In), the country’s nodal cybersecurity watchdog. At present, Cert-In comes under the administrative control of the IT Ministry.

The IT Ministry, however, believes the CERT-In’s job, which includes incident reporting and also alerting organisations about malware, is quite technical in nature, and that its remit goes far beyond law enforcement purposes.

“Cert-In’s main job is to share inputs with the government on how the security infrastructure can be better, which is a very technical function. They have very limited powers in terms of actually carrying out investigations. For instance, unlike law enforcement agencies, Cert-In does not have any search and seizure powers, which limits its abilities to conduct full-blown investigations on its own,” a senior government official told The Indian Express.