ASSISTANCE TO STATES TO TACKLE CYBER INCIDENTS

• CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) is the national nodal agency for responding to cyber security incidents under Section 70B of the IT Act, 2000.
• Topic covers the central government's mechanism to handhold States/UTs — alerts, threat intelligence, capacity building and financial aid — in a domain where "Police" and "Public Order" are State subjects but cyberspace is borderless.
• Cyber incidents have more than doubled in 5 years — from 14.02 lakh (2021) to 29.44 lakh (2025) — making this a high-yield GS-III internal security topic.