Participants, the government notification said, will get rewards of up to ₹10 lakh and commendation certificates. op participants can also be empanelled by the NCIIPC to run security testing exercises for India’s critical information infrastructure

New Delhi: The National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) is crowd sourcing ethical hackers and security researchers to participate in its 10-20 day exercise of testing India’s critical information infrastructure in a controlled environment. This is the first time that the NCIIPC is conducting such an exercise.

To “inculcate the culture of continuously carrying out testing of the security posture of Critical Information infrastructure (CII) through engagement of top quality pen-testers , security researchers and ethical hackers”, the NCIIPC “is in the process of enrolling security researchers, ethical hackers, professional pen-testers and the like”. The date for this exercise will be determined by the convenience and availability of the entities that are critical information infrastructure, and of the ethical hackers who want to participate in this process.

Participants, the notification said, will get rewards of up to ₹10 lakh and commendation certificates. Top participants can also be empanelled by the NCIIPC to run security testing exercises for India’s critical information infrastructure.

The NCIIPC is a part of the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) and was established in January 2014 as the designated nodal agency for protection critical information infrastructure. Currently, seven sectors are identified as critical information infrastructure in India --- government; transport; banking, financial services and insurance; power and energy; healthcare; telecommunications; and strategic and public enterprises.

(With Agency Inputs)