IT Ministry issues draft road maps for critical tech sectors

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology this week put out draft roadmaps for conducting indigenous research and development for cyber forensics, quantum computing technologies, mobile security, cryptography, and Internet of Things (IoT) security. The roadmaps, prepared by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, aim to solve a series of issues by different time spans between now and 2047, the centenary of Indian independence.

The cybersecurity roadmap, for instance, seeks to develop “Social Media Analytics” by 2026, while “Dark Web Forensics” has until 2030 for completion. Detection of child exploitation and human trafficking are marked as ongoing efforts that will start in 2027 and continue beyond 2047. GPS and vehicle forensics will be completed by 2027 and 2029, respectively, while banking fraud and UPI payment forensics solutions have until 2029 and 2030, respectively.

On the quantum computing side, the roadmap says that research and development efforts to develop quantum computers will carry on till 2034. The mobile security roadmap aims, on the other hand, to engage in fostering “enterprise-grade” security systems, creating an “indigenous system for secure [operating systems] and mobile device hardware.” 

While these roadmaps envision activities that will stretch well into 2047 and beyond, the cryptography roadmap — which seeks to achieve domestic digital encryption development goals — says that goals for ‘asymmetric cryptography’ and for IoT devices should be completed by 2028-33, including “quantum-resistant cryptography,” which refers to encryption technologies that can withstand exponentially stronger decryption attempts.