Cyber Capabilities and National Power Report: IISS

• Cyber capabilities and National power: A net assessment report has been released by the International Institute for strategic studies(IISS). IISS has done a qualitative assessment of the cyber capabilities of 15 major countries.
• Besides India, the report analyzes the cyber capabilities of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Russia, North Korea, Japan, and Israel, among others.

• ‘Cyber Capabilities and National Power: A Net Assessment’ report has been released by International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Report assess each country’s capabilities in seven categories:

1. Strategy and doctrine
2. Governance, command and control
3. Core cyber-intelligence capability
4. Cyber empowerment and dependence
5. Cybersecurity and resilience
6. Global leadership in cyberspace affairs
7. Offensive cyber capability

• The report divides the countries into three tiers based on analysis of core cyber-intelligence capabilities, cyber security and resilience, strategy and doctrine and offensive cyber capability.
• The U.S. is the only country in tier one with world-leading strengths in all categories.
• Countries like Australia, Canada, China, France, Israel, Russia and the United Kingdom are placed in tier two.
• India, along with Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, North Korea and Vietnam, are in tier three with “potential strengths in some categories but significant weaknesses in others”.

• This report provides confirmation of the likely durability of US digital-industrial superiority for at least the next ten years.
• There can be two reasons for this.

1. In advanced cyber technologies and their exploitation for economic and military power, the US is still ahead of China.
2. Since 2018, the US and several of its leading allies have agreed to restrict China’s access to some Western technologies.

India specific observations:

• Despite the geostrategic instability of its region and awareness of the cyber threat it faces, India has made only modest progress in developing its policy and doctrine for cyberspace security.
• They work closely with the main cyber-intelligence agency, the National Technical Research Organisation.
• India has a good regional cyber-intelligence reach but relies on partners, including the United States, for wider insight.
• India has some cyber-intelligence and offensive cyber capabilities but they are regionally focused, principally on Pakistan.

• The military confrontation with China in the disputed Ladakh border area in June 2020, followed by a sharp increase in Chinese activity against Indian networks, has heightened Indian concerns about cybersecurity, not least in systems supplied by China.
• India is a third-tier cyber power whose best chance of progressing to the second tier is by harnessing its great digital-industrial potential and adopting a whole-of-society approach to improving its cybersecurity.

• National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), established in 2004, is under the National Security Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office and focuses on intelligence gathering.
• The agency specializes in multiple disciplines, which include remote sensing, data gathering and processing, cyber security, geospatial information gathering, cryptology, strategic hardware and software's development and strategic monitoring.
• NTRO has the same “norms of conduct” as the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW).