India, Australia Plan Cyber Pact Amid Rising Global Attacks

The governments of India and Australia are in initial discussions to consider sharing real-time data to combat cybercrimes, driven by an increase in cyberattacks from countries like North Korea targeting essential infrastructure, including power grids and healthcare facilities.

Brendan Dowling, the ambassador for cyber affairs and critical technologies in Australia's department of foreign affairs and trade, informed Mint that both nations are growing more interested in a bilateral agreement that focuses on data-sharing to tackle cybercrime.

“The current MLAT process is not smooth and impedes our ability to cooperate. Bilaterally, there’s room to improve. There have been conversations between India and Australia to set up a bilateral cyber security-driven data sharing agreement,” Dowling said. “Conceptually, both countries agree upon the need for it—what hasn’t happened is a framework to make this happen, though the intent is there.”

“There is a time lag in the process of MLATs being executed. When bilaterals are discussed for data sharing to particularly combat cybercrimes, the procedure being adopted is going to be the most critical for India to put it into effective use,” said NS Nappinai, senior counsel at the Supreme Court of India and founder of cybersecurity advocacy platform Cyber Saathi.

Nappinai stated that even with the data-sharing restrictions established by India's Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, sharing data across borders is essential for monitoring cybercrimes.

“Data protection laws have built-in exemptions, particularly for data sharing inter alia for criminal investigations. All countries that are signatories of the Budapest Convention have to do data-sharing as per the agreement. This includes European Union countries, which follow the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), the gold standard of privacy laws. Data protection laws, therefore, do not prevent countries from data sharing when it comes to combating crimes,” she said.

“A bilateral agreement between two countries is a good move, because ultimately, whatever the treaties and conventions may be, countries will eventually need to capture the same within municipal laws and methodologies for implementing them. Bilaterals are one way of doing that,” she said.

The driving force behind these information-sharing agreements is the increase in cyberattacks targeting public infrastructure like healthcare, power distribution, and water systems.