Cyber Fraud in India: A Plague Amidst A Plague

2020 will go down in history as the year that brought humanity together, in the most uncommon & unfavorable circumstances. We all had to fight the same enemy. An enemy that is unseen yet more powerful and lethal than the ones visible.

While we are fighting and triumphing as a country, there is one more unseen enemy that’s plaguing our great nation and ravaging the digitally innocent.

And that is Cyber Fraud.

The Criminal Minds

The word cyber fraud refers to cybercriminals, who are the perpetrators of the fraud. A group of people who are evil by nature and do not spare man, woman, child, sick, strong, old, young, or anybody in between.

Cybercriminals use computer systems to gain access to sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers, and other sensitive data for malicious or exploitative purposes.

They also use other corrupt means such as bullying, harassment, and other forms of crimes to target innocent people who would do anything to leave them alone in peace. Many times, these crimes are not reported due to fear, societal bias, and lack of time or resources to pursue the criminal.

These inherent weaknesses and the sheer size of the online world in India are the loopholes that cybercriminals take complete advantage of.

The Size of the Fraud

As of 2020, there are 700 million internet users in India, according to Statista. These numbers are increasing by the day and so are the crimes related.

According to The Kaspersky Security Network, their products detected and blocked 52,820,874 local cyber threats in India between January to March this year.

The data also shows that India now ranks 27th globally in the number of web-threats detected by the company in Q1 2020 as compared to when it ranked on the 32nd position globally in Q4 2019.

India also ranks 11th worldwide in the number of attacks caused by servers that were hosted in the country, which accounts of 2,299,682 incidents in Q1 2020 as compared to 854,782 incidents detected in Q4 2019, said the report.

In a recent report, the multinational cybersecurity company Check Point Research published startling figures on cyberattacks designed to take advantage of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

In the three weeks leading up to May, the company recorded around 192,000 coronavirus-related cyberattacks every week – a staggering 30 per cent increase over previous weeks.

Fake Identity & Credentials

One of the biggest cyber fraud issues that India faces today is the theft of identity and credentials. You can get a fake academic credential done in a matter of days with the help of photoshop experts. At the same time stealing somebody's online identity or creating fake profiles around an identity is a common occurrence.

NortonLifelock in its annual cybersecurity report has confirmed that at least 4 in 10 Indians have experienced identity theft and wish they knew how to protect themselves.

Cybercriminals also steal online identities and credentials to gain access to various places online and offline. Akamai's annual security report in 2020 confirms that 3.9 billion malicious login attacks have taken place in India, giving us a global rank of 2, right behind the USA.

Most of these issues have always existed in India, but COVID has only increased these attacks even more.

As people continue to lose jobs and enter critical financial states, cybercriminals are thriving based on victims' identities & credentials. They are taking undue advantage of our country’s citizens and corporates during these troubled times.

Is there a solution?

As cybercrime continues to evolve, citizens and companies need to continuously upgrade themselves about modern cyber-attacks and raise awareness of threats to the relevant authorities. However, there needs to be a robust solution to prevent a crime before it ever happens.

So, is there a solution as such? Yes, Blockchain Technology.

Blockchain Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) focuses on building trust in an untrusted ecosystem, making it a decentralized ledger system. All information is transparently available to all members of a particular blockchain, and all the transaction data encrypted on the blockchain can be viewed, recorded, passed around, and recorded by member nodes.

It can improve authentication, data mapping, and protect identities; which can be used to prevent fraud, data theft, identity theft, and other forms of cybercrime.

Blockchain enables security systems deployed in organizations to use distributed key public infrastructure to authenticate devices and users. It has a robust DNS entry approach that can improve security by removing vulnerable targets that can be compromised.

When a user publishes his public key on the blockchain, information about previous blocks stored in the register is linked and distributed to thousands or millions of nodes. In the event of a network attack, this could also pose a threat to the security of the entire network, not just the user’s private key.

At the same time, it provides the ability to resolve single attack points and multiple targets, such as a database, network, or data centres.

Ledger technology has a range of applications, including encrypted messages, smart contracts, identity management, and data encryption.

Blockchain technology will remain, and it will help companies, individuals, and governments protect themselves, their assets, and their data. Innovative blockchain use is mainly useful for enhancing cybersecurity but has already become a component in other areas such as cryptocurrencies.

Bringing the Change

We have started our fight to reduce fraud. My team and I have been involved in developing a concrete blockchain solution called TruScholar to address fraudulent credentials and identity theft in Universities, EdTech, Recruitment, and Government IDs.

Our solution enables users to protect their identities through digital wallets which are encrypted and can never be tampered with.

At TruScholar, our mission is to remove fraudulent credentials and create self-sovereign identities that users can share with anyone at any time, while retaining complete protection.

We hope to change the way the world perceives India and make it a place where fraud can never prevail.