Sebi rejigs high-level panel on cyber security, expands to 6 members

Sebi has restructured its high-level panel on cyber security that suggests measures to safeguard the capital markets from such attacks.

The committee, which has now six members, will be chaired by Navin Kumar Singh, DG at National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC).

Earlier, the committee had only four members, an update with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) showed.

The other members of the panel include Sanjay Bahl Director General at Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and H Krishnamurthy, who was a chief research scientist at IISC Bangalore.

Sandeep Shukla and Debdeep Mukhopadhyay -- who are professors at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in IIT Kanpur and IIT Kharagpur, respectively, and Sugata Gangopadhyay -- head of the department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Roorkee, are the other members of the committee.

The high-powered steering committee has been entrusted with the task of overseeing and providing overall guidance on cyber security initiatives for Sebi as well as for the entire capital market.

Besides, it will advise Sebi in developing and maintaining cyber security and cyber resilience requirements aligned with global best practices and industry standards in accordance with the need of the Indian capital market structure.

It will also identify measures to improve cyber resilience and related business continuity and disaster recovery process in the Indian securities market. The committee will study major cyber-attack incidents related to financial markets in domestic and global markets and identify gaps in the existing cyber security and cyber resilience framework.

In addition, it will periodically review the mandate and functioning of Security Operations Centers and will guide Sebi in setting up a Cyber Lab/Cyber Center of Excellence for the securities market.

It will engage in continuous dialogues with relevant external agencies, such as CERT-In, National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCSC), Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), and leading academic institutions and organisations, among others, to further strengthen cyber security and cyber resilience.

The committee would provide recommendations for the strengthening of processes to audit cyber security and cyber resilience setups in the Indian securities market.

In May 2017, the capital markets regulator had set up the panel, which was headed by then whole-time member Madhabi Puri Buch. She is currently the chairperson of Sebi.