Tech Trends - 2023
Introduction
Netizens across the globe have been enjoying the fruits of technological advancements in the digital century. Our personal and professional life has been impacted deeply by the new technologies. The previous year we saw an exponential rise in blockchain integration and the applications of Web 3.0. There is no denying that the Covid-19 pandemic caused a rapid rise in technology and internet penetration all across the globe, bringing the world closer with respect to connectivity and the exchange of ideas and knowledge. Tech advancements have definitely made our lives easier, but the same has also opened the doors to various vulnerabilities and new potential threats. As cyberspace expands, so do the vulnerabilities associated with it, and it is critical we take note of such issues and create safeguards to the extent that such incidents are prevented before they occur. We need to create sustainable and secure cyberspace for future generations.MetaVerse in 2023The metaverse was introduced by Facebook (now Meta) in 2021 as a peak into the future of cyberspace. Since then, tech developers have been working towards arming the metaverse with extraordinary innovations and applications. Netizens came across news like someone bought a house or a plot in the metaverse, someone bought a car in the metaverse, and so on, these news were taken to be the evidence of the netizen’s transition towards the new digital age as we have seen in sci-fi movies. But today this type of news has become history and the metaverse is expanding faster than ever. Let us look at the latest developments and trends in the metaverse-
- Avatar creation - The avatar creation in the metaverse will be a pivotal move as the avatars will represent the user, and essentially it will be the digital, version of the user and will be similar to the user's personal and physical traits to maintain realism in the metaverse.
- Architecture firms - Metaverse has its own set of architects who will be working towards creating your dream home or pro[erty in the metaverse, the heavy code-based services are now being sold just as if they were in the physical space.
- Mining - The metaverse already has companies who are mining gold, silver, petroleum, and other resources for the avatars in the metaverse, for instance, if someone has bought a car in the metaverse, it will still need fuel to run.
- Security firms - These firms are the first line of defenders in the metaverse as they provide tech-based solutions and protocols to secure one’s avatar and belongings in the metaverse.
- Metaverse Police - Interpol, along with its global partner organization has created the metaverse police, who will be working towards creating a safe cyber ecosystem by maintaining compliance with digital laws and ethics.
Advancements beyond metaverse in 2023
Technology continues to be a critical force for change in the world. Technology breakthroughs give enterprises more possibilities to lift their productivity and invent offerings. And while it remains difficult to forecast how technology trends will play out, business leaders can plan ahead better by watching the development of new technologies, anticipating how companies could utilize them, and understanding the factors that impact innovation and adoption.
- Applied observability
It advances the practice of pattern recognition. To foresee and identify abnormalities and offer solutions, one must have the capacity to delve deeply into complicated systems and a stream of data. Data fuels this aspect of tech growth in the future.
- Digital Immune System
To ensure that all major systems operate round-the-clock to deliver uninterrupted services, Digital Immune System will combine observability, AI-augmented testing, chaos engineering, site reliability engineering (SRE), and software supply chain security. This will take the efficiency of the systems to a new level.
- Super apps
These represent the upcoming shift in application usage, design, and development, where consumers will utilise a single app to manage most systems in an enterprise ecosystem. Over 50% of the world’s population will utilise super apps on a daily basis to fulfill their daily personal and professional needs.
- AR/VR and BlockChain technology
A combination of better interconnected, safe, and immersive virtual environments where people and businesses may recreate real-life scenarios will be created by combining AR/VR, AI/ML, IoT, and Blockchain, thus creating a new vertical of innovation with keen technologies of Web 3.0.
- AAI
The next level of AI, i.e., Advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI), will revolutionise machine learning, pattern recognition, and computing. It aims to fully automate processes without requiring any manual input, thus eradicating the issues of human error and bad actor influence completely.
- Corporate Metaverse
Aside from its power as a marketing tool, the metaverse promises to provide platforms, tools, and entire virtual worlds where business can be done remotely, efficiently, and intelligently. We can expect to see the metaverse concept merge with the idea of the “digital twin” – virtual simulations of real-world products, processes, or operations that can be used to test and prototype new ideas in the safe environment of the digital domain. From wind farms to Formula 1 cars, designers are recreating physical objects inside virtual worlds where their efficiency can be stress-tested under any conceivable condition without the resource costs that would be incurred by testing them in the physical world.ConclusionIn 2023, we will see more advanced use cases for technology such as motion capture, which will mean that as well as looking and sounding more like us, our avatars will adopt our own unique gestures and body language. We may even start to see further developments in the fields of autonomous avatars – meaning they won't be under our direct control but will be enabled by AI to act as our representatives in the digital world while we ourselves get on with other, completely unrelated tasks. As we go deeper into cyberspace, we need to remember the basic safety practices and inculcate them with respect to cyberspace and work towards creating string policies and legislations to safeguard the digital rights and duties of the netizen to create a wholesome and interdependent cyber ecosystem.
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Introduction
Social media has become integral to our lives and livelihood in today’s digital world. Influencers are now strong people who shape trends, views, and consumer behaviour. Influencers have become targets for bad actors aiming to abuse their fame due to their significant internet presence. Unfortunately, account hacking has grown frequently, with significant ramifications for influencers and their followers. Furthermore, the emergence of social media platforms in recent years has opened the way for influencer culture. Influencers exert power over their followers’ ideas, lifestyle choices, and purchase decisions. Influencers and brands frequently collaborate to exploit their reach, resulting in a mutually beneficial environment. As a result, the value of influencer accounts has risen dramatically, attracting the attention of hackers trying to abuse their potential for financial gain or personal advantage.
Instances of recent attacks
Places of worship
The hackers have targeted renowned temples for fulfilling their malicious activities the recent attack happened on The Khautji Shyam Temple, a famous religious institution with enormous cultural and spiritual value for its adherents. It serves as a place of worship, community events, and numerous religious activities. However, since technology has invaded all sectors of life, the temple’s online presence has developed, giving worshippers access to information, virtual darshans (holy viewings), and interactive forums. Unfortunately, this digital growth has also rendered the shrine vulnerable to cyber threats. The hackers hacked the Facebook page twice in the month, demanded donations and hacked the cheques the devotes gave to the trust. The second event happened by posting objectional images on the page and hurting the sentiments of the devotees. The Committee of the temple has filed an FIR under various charges and is also seeking help from the cyber cell.
Social media Influencers
Influencers enjoy a vast online following worldwide, but their presence is limited to the digital space. Hence every video, photo is of importance to them. An incident took place with leading news anchor and reporter Barkha Dutt, where in her youtube channel was hacked into, and all the posts made from the channel were deleted. The hackers also replaced the channel’s logo with Tesla and were streaming a live video on the channel featuring Elon Musk. A similar incident was reported by influencer Tanmay Bhatt, who also lost all the content e had posted on his channel. The hackers use the following methods to con social media influencers:
- Social engineering
- Phishing
- Brute Force Attacks
Such attacks on influencers can cause harm to their reputation, can also cause financial loss, and even lose the trust of the viewers or the followers who follow them, thus further impacting the collaborations.
Safeguards
Social media influencers need to be very careful about their cyber security as their prominent presence is in the online world. The influencers from different platforms should practice the following safeguards to protect themselves and their content better online
Secure your accounts
Protecting your accounts with passphrases or strong passwords is the first step. The best strategy for doing this is to create a passphrase, a phrase only you know. We advise choosing a passphrase with at least four words and 15 characters.
To further secure your accounts, you must enable multi-factor authentication in the second step.
To access your account, a hacker must guess your password and provide a second authentication factor (such as a face scan or fingerprint) that matches yours.
Be careful about who has access
Many social media influencers collaborate with a team to help generate and post content while building their personal brands.
This entails using team members who can write and produce material that influencers can share themselves, according to some of them. In these situations, the influencer is the only person who still has access to the account.
There are more potential weak spots when more people have access. Additionally, it increases the number of ways a password or account access could fall into the hands of a cybercriminal. Only some staff members will be as cautious about password security as you may be.
Stay up-to-date on the threats
What’s the most significant way to combat threats to computer security? Information.
Cybercriminals constantly adapt their methods. It’s crucial to stay informed about these threats and how they can be utilised against you.
But it’s not just threats. Social media platforms and other service providers are likewise changing their offerings to avoid these challenges.
Educate yourself to protect yourself. You can keep one step ahead of the hazards that cybercriminals offer by continuously educating yourself.
Preach cybersecurity
As influencers, cyber security should be preached, no matter your agenda.
This will also enable users to inculcate best practices for digital hygiene.
This will also boost the reporting numbers and increase population awareness, thus eradicating such bad actors from our cyberspace.
Acknowledge the risks
Keeping a blind eye will always hurt the safety aspects, as ignorance always causes issues.
Risks should be kept in mind while creating the digital routine and netiquette
Always inform your users of risk existing and potential risks
Monitor threats
After the acknowledgement, it is essential to monitor threats.
Active lookout for threats will allow you to understand the modus Operandi and the vulnerabilities to avoid criminals
Threats monitoring is also a basic netizens’ responsibility to ensure that the threats are reported as they emerge.
Interpret the data
All cyber nodal agencies release data and trends of cybercrimes, understand the trends and protect your vulnerabilities.
Data interpretation can lead to an early flagging of threats and issues, thus protecting the cyber ecosystem by and large.
Create risk profiles
All influencers should create risk profiles and backup profiles.
This will also help protect one’s data as it can be stored on different profiles.
Risk profiles and having a private profile are essential to safeguard the basic cyber interests of an influencer.
Conclusion
As we go deeper into the digital age, we see more technologies emerging, but along with them, we see a new generation of cyber threats and challenges. The physical, as well as the cyberspace, is now inter twinned and interdependent. Practising basic cyber security practices, hygiene, netiquette, and monitoring best practices will go a long way in protecting the online interests of the Influencers and will impact their followers to engage in best practices thus safeguarding the cyber ecosystem at large.
Introduction
Data protection has been a critical aspect of advocacy and governance all across the world. Data fuels our cyber-ecosystem and strengthens the era of emerging technologies. All industries and sectors are now dependent upon the data of the user. The governments across the world have been deliberating internally to address the issue and legality of Data protection and privacy. The Indian government has witnessed various draft bills and policies focusing on Data protection over the years, and the contemporary bill is the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023, which was tabled at the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) on 03 August for discussions and parliamentary assent.
What is DPDP, 2023?
The goal of the complete and comprehensive Digital Personal Data Protection Bill of 2023 is to establish a framework for the protection of personal data in India. The measure acknowledges the significance of protecting personal data and seeks to strike a balance between the necessity to process personal data for legitimate purposes and the right of individuals to do so. The bill establishes a number of crucial expressions and ideas associated with the protection of personal data, including “data fiduciary,” “data principal,” and “sensitive personal data.” It also emphasises the duties of data fiduciaries, including the need to establish suitable security measures to preserve personal data and the need to secure data principals’ consent before processing their personal information. The measure also creates the Data Protection Board of India, which would implement its requirements and guarantee data fiduciaries’ compliance. The board will have the authority to look into grievances, give directives, and impose sanctions for non-compliance.
Key Features of the Bill
The bill tabled at the parliament has the following key features:
- The 2023 bill imposes reasonable obligations on data fiduciaries and data processors to safeguard digital personal data.
- Under the 2023 bill, a new Data Protection Board is established, which will ensure compliance, remedies and penalties.
- Under the new bill, the Board has been entrusted with the power equivalent to a civil court, such as the power to take cognisance in response to personal data breaches, investigate complaints, imposing penalties. Additionally, the Board can issue directions to ensure compliance with the act.
- The 2023 bill also secures more rights of Individuals and establishes a balance between user protection and growing innovations.
- The bill creates a transparent and accountable data governance framework by giving more rights to individuals.
- There is an Incorporation of Business-friendly provisions by removing criminal penalties for non-compliance and facilitating international data transfers.
- The new 2023 bill balances out fundamental privacy rights and puts reasonable limitations on those rights.
- The new data protection board will carefully examine the instance of non-compliance by imposing penalties on non-compiler.
- The bill does not provide any express clarity in regards to compensation to be granted to the Data Principal in case of a Data Breach.
- Under 2023 Deemed consent is there in its new form as ‘Legitimate Users’ pertaining to the conditions in regard to Sovernity and Intergrity of India.
- There is an introduction of the negative list, which restricts cross-data transfer.
Additionally, the measure makes special provisions for the processing of children’s personal data and acknowledges the significance of protecting children’s privacy. Additionally, it highlights the rights of the data subjects, including their right to access their personal information, their right to have wrong information corrected, and their right to be forgotten.
Drive4CyberPeace
A campaign was undertaken by CyberPeace to gain a critical understanding of what people understand about Data privacy and protection in India. The 4-month long campaign led to a pan-India interaction with netizens from different areas and backgrounds. The thoughts and opinions of the netizens were understood and collated in the form of a whitepaper which was, in turn, presented to Parliamentarians and government officials. The whitepaper laid the foundation of the recommendations submitted to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology as part of the stakeholder consultation.
Conclusion
Overall, the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill of 2023 is an important step towards safeguarding Indian citizens’ privacy and personal data. It creates a regulatory agency to guarantee compliance and enforcement and offers a thorough framework for data protection. The law includes special measures for the protection of sensitive personal data and the personal data of children and acknowledges the significance of striking a balance between the right to privacy and the necessity of data processing.
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Introduction:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) focuses on threats and is an intelligence-driven agency with both law enforcement and intelligence responsibilities. The FBI has the power and duty to look into certain offences that are entrusted to it and to offer other law enforcement agencies cooperation services including fingerprint identification, lab tests, and training. In order to support its own investigations as well as those of its collaborators and to better comprehend and address the security dangers facing the United States, the FBI also gathers, disseminates, and analyzes intelligence.
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) Functions combating cybercrime:
- Collection: Internet crime victims can report incidents and notify the relevant authorities of potential illicit Internet behavior using the IC3. Law enforcement frequently advises and directs victims to use www.ic3.gov to submit a complaint.
- Analysis: To find new dangers and trends, the IC3 examines and examines data that users submit via its website.
- Public Awareness: The website posts public service announcements, business alerts, and other publications outlining specific frauds. Helps to raise awareness and make people become aware of Internet crimes and how to stay protected.
- Referrals: The IC3 compiles relevant complaints to create referrals, which are sent to national, international, local, and state law enforcement agencies for possible investigation. If law enforcement conducts an investigation and finds evidence of a crime, the offender may face legal repercussions.
Alarming increase in cyber crime cases:
In the recently released 2022 Internet Crime Report by the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), the statistics paint a concerning picture of cybercrime in the United States. FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 39,416 cases of extortion in 2022. The number of cases in 2021 stood at 39,360.
FBI officials emphasize the growing scope and sophistication of cyber-enabled crimes, which come from around the world. They highlight the importance of reporting incidents to IC3 and stress the role of law enforcement and private-sector partnerships.
About Internet Crime Complaint Center IC3:
IC3 was established in May 2000 by the FBI to receive complaints related to internet crimes.
It has received over 7.3 million complaints since its inception, averaging around 651,800 complaints per year over the last five years. IC3's mission is to provide the public with a reliable reporting mechanism for suspected cyber-enabled criminal activity and to collaborate with law enforcement and industry partners.
The FBI encourages the public to regularly review consumer and industry alerts published by IC3. An victim of an internet crime are urged to submit a complaint to IC3, and can also file a complaint on behalf of another person. These statistics underscore the ever-evolving and expanding threat of cybercrime and the importance of vigilance and reporting to combat this growing challenge.
What is sextortion?
The use or threatened use of a sexual image or video of another person without that person’s consent, derived from online encounters or social media websites or applications, primarily to extort money from that person or asking for sexual favours and giving warning to distribute that picture or video to that person’s friends, acquaintances, spouse, partner, or co-workers or in public domain.
Sextortion is an online crime that can be understood as, when an bad actor coerces a young person into creating or sharing a sexual image or video of themselves and then uses it to get something from such young person, such as other sexual images, money, or even sexual favours. Reports highlights that more and more kids are being blackmailed in this way. Sextortion can also happen to adults. Sextortion can also take place by taking your pictures from social media account and converting those pictures into sexually explicit content by morphing such images or creating deepfake by miusing deepfake technologies.
Sextortion in the age of AI and advanced technologies:
AI and deep fake technology make sextortion even more dangerous and pernicious. A perpetrator can now produce a high-quality deep fake that convincingly shows a victim engaged in explicit acts — even if the person has not done any such thing.
Legal Measures available in cases of sextortion:
In India, cybersecurity is governed primarily by the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act). Addressing cyber crimes such as hacking, identity theft, and the publication of obscene material online, sextortion and other cyber crimes. The IT Act covers various aspects of electronic governance and e-commerce, with providing provisions for defining such offences and providing punishment for such offences.
Recently Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 has been enacted by the Indian Government to protect the digital personal data of the Individuals. These laws collectively establish the legal framework for cybersecurity and cybercrime prevention in India. Victims are urged to report the crime to local law enforcement and its cybercrime divisions. Law enforcement will investigate sextortion cases reports and will undertake appropriate legal action.
How to stay protected from evolving cases of sextortion: Best Practices:
- Report the Crime to law enforcement agency and social media platform or Internet service provider.
- Enable Two-step verification as an extra layer of protection.
- Keep your laptop Webcams covered when not in use.
- Stay protected from malware and phishing Attacks.
- Protect your personal information on your social media account, and also monitor your social media accounts in order to identify any suspicious activity. You can also set and review privacy settings of your social media accounts.
Conclusion:
Sextortion cases has been increased in recent time. Knowing the risk, being aware of rules and regulations, and by following best practices will help in preventing such crime and help you to stay safe and also avoid the chance of being victimized. It is important to spreading awareness about such growing cyber crimes and empowering the people to report it and it is also significant to provide support to victims. Let’s all unite in order to fight against such cyber crimes and also to make life a safer place on the internet or digital space.
References:
- https://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2022_IC3ElderFraudReport.pdf
- https://octillolaw.com/insights/fbi-ic3-releases-2022-internet-crime-report/
- https://www.iafci.org/app_themes/docs/Federal%20Agency/2022_IC3Report.pdf
