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Exams आसान है !

24 September 2022

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MAINS DAILY QUESTIONS & MODEL ANSWERS

Q1. What is Black Swan Event?

Paper & Topic: GS III à Science and Technology

Model Answer:

About the “black swan” event:

  • A black swan is an uncommon, unforeseen event that shocks people and has a major effect on society or the entire world.
  • These events are said to have three distinctive features: they are incredibly unusual and outside the range of typical expectations; they have a significant impact after they occur; and they appear probable in retrospect when reasonable explanations emerge.
  • When did the phrase first appear?
  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a writer and investor, first proposed the black swan idea in 2001. His 2007 book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, later made the theory well-known.
  • The word “black swan” itself has a connection to its discovery.
  • Up until 1697, when a Dutch adventurer discovered the first black swan in Australia, Europeans thought all swans were white.
  • The term “black swan incident” comes from this rare observation in the 17th century, which fundamentally altered how people in the West thought about swans.

Conclusion:

  • Taleb’s book was published before the global financial crisis of 2008, a “black swan” occurrence brought on by a rapid collapse of the soaring US housing market.
  • The collapse of the Soviet Union and the September 11, 2001, terrorist strike in the US also fit under this category.

Q2. What is Critical Information Infrastructure? Discuss.

Paper & Topic: GS III à Science and Technology/Infrastructure related issues

Model Answer:

About:

  • According to the Information Technology Act of 2000, critical information infrastructure is any computer resource whose loss would have a negative impact on the economy, public health, or safety, as well as on national security.
  • The IT Act of 2000 gives the government the authority to designate any data, database, IT network, or communications infrastructure as CII in order to safeguard that digital asset.
  • A prison sentence of up to 10 years may be imposed on anyone who illegally secures access to or attempts to secure access to a protected system.

What Justifies the Need for CII Classification and Protection?

  • Global Practice: Governments from all across the world have been acting quickly to secure their vital information infrastructure.
  • IT resources are the backbone of numerous crucial processes in a nation’s infrastructure, and due to their interdependence, any disruptions can have a ripple effect on various industries.
  • Failure in IT ruins other industries: Power grid outages caused by information technology issues can have a devastating effect on other industries like healthcare, banking, and other financial services.
  • Example: Denial-of-Service Attacks on a Massive Scale in Estonia: A series of denial-of-service assaults, purportedly launched from Russian IP addresses, struck important Estonian banks, the parliament, government agencies, and media outlets in 2007. It was cyberaggression on a scale never before witnessed in history. For almost three weeks after the assaults, one of the world’s most networked nations saw chaos.
  • A Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack aims to bring down a computer system or network so that its intended users are unable to access it. DoS attacks achieve this by providing the victim an excessive amount of traffic or information that causes a crash.

Case Study: India:

  • As India faced the pandemic in October 2020, Mumbai’s electric grid supply abruptly failed, affecting the megacity’s hospitals, trains, and businesses.
  • Later, a US company’s analysis suggested that this power loss may have been the result of a cyberattack on vital infrastructure, purportedly launched by a group with ties to China. However, the authorities swiftly refuted any Mumbai cyberattack.
  • However, the incident highlighted both the need to fortify such assets and the prospect of hostile state and non-state actors probing internet-dependent critical infrastructure in other countries.

In India, how are CIIs safeguarded?

As a Nodal Agency, NCIIPC:

  • The National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), established in January 2014, is the focal point for implementing all protective measures for the country’s critical information infrastructure.

Conclusion:

  • Protection from illegal access, modification, usage, disclosure, disruption, incapacitation, or distraction is required for CIIs.
  • In order to inform policy decisions, share knowledge, and maintain situational awareness for early warning or alerts, it will track and forecast threats to CII at the national level.
  • The NCIIPC may request information from the critical sectors or people serving or having a critical influence on the critical information infrastructure in the case of any danger to such infrastructure.

Fundamental Duty:

  • The organisation that manages the CII system has primary responsibility for keeping it secure.

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