India will soon get an overarching body for cyber intelligence and security, IT and Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said here on Saturday.

The concept note for the Rs. 800-crore project has been sent to various Ministries for inputs. Once we receive their comments, we will make a note for the Cabinets consideration, Mr. Prasad said.

A year in the works, the National Cyber Security and Coordination Centre (NCSC) will analyse Internet traffic data scanned and integrated from various gateway routers at a centralised location. It will facilitate real-time assessment of cyber-security threats and generate actionable reports for various agencies.

As a multi-agency body under the Department of Electronics and IT, the NCSC will include the National Security Council Secretariat, the Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), the three armed forces and the Department of Telecommunications.

It is expected to subsume the work done by CERT-In as well as issue alerts in the event of a cyber-attack.

Mr. Prasad also mentioned a game-changer move to connect 2.5 lakh panchayats to the national optic fibre network over the next three years at a cost of Rs. 21,100 crore. As many as 50,000 panchayats will be linked this year, he said.

Mr. Prasad said the Union government had set up a dedicated cell to process 2.5 lakh concrete proposals received under the MyGov initiative launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in late July. The initiative aims to enable citizen contribution in governance and invites opinions and views on important issues.

Here is the original post:

Super cyber intelligence body soon, announces IT Minister