Nair, who had in July 2022 taken over as the 28th Signal Officer-in-Chief, has also served as the commandant of the Military College of Telecommunication Engineering.
Nair takes over as the NCSC from Lt Gen Rajesh Pant who is also a veteran of the Corps of Signals of the Indian Army. Pant served as the NCSC chief after Gulshan Rai, who was the first chief of the cybersecurity and e-surveillance agency.
The NCSC, under National Security Council Secretariat, coordinates with different central-level agencies in matters of cyber security issues of national and critical importance. The agency is also responsible for monitoring communication metadata and passes on these inputs to various law enforcement agencies to look into possible cases of cybercrime.
The NCSC is currently working on updating and replacing a 2013 National Cyber Security Strategy which will emphasize a common but differentiated approach (CBDR) meaning that though the overall goal of cybersecurity will remain the same for everyone, it will have different goals for government organisations, private institutions, academia and other stakeholders.
The National Cyber Security Reference Framework (NCRF), which will replace the 2013 strategy, is intended to act as a document to guide critical sectors such as banking, telecom, power and energy, banking and financial services, transportation, strategic and government enterprises as well as healthcare companies in areas of their internet governance and network management.
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Apart from this, the document is also likely to provide these sectors with guidance in cases of cyberattacks and the best ways to recoup and get back online after attacks on their systems.
