The government in India has decided to award the cyber security issue more attention and to turn into reality one of its long-proposed cyber defense projects, the National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC).

The country has allotted $16.2 / €13 million for this purpose. The largest part of the money may be used for implementing the NCCC project, which is estimated to cost about $13 / €10.5 million.

NCCC’s purpose would be to help the country deal with malicious cyber-activities; it would act as an Internet traffic monitoring entity that can fend off domestic or international attacks.

This could raise a serious issue if abused, because there is the risk of privacy invasion on citizens. As expected, officials say that the entity would not have such attributions.

Defense World reports that the department of electronics and information technology seeks approval for two additional projects; one is aimed at making the government’s email system stronger.

The other is a more ambitious one and it would be designed to tackle the problem of the botnets. Basically, it would have to determine the extent of a botnet and its infrastructure, and take it down in a manner that would not impact on the end users.

NCCC is expected to be formed by the end of next year.