Country cannot afford to take cyber security resources from even friendly nations: IT Secretary

India cannot afford to take cyber security resources even from friendly nations as it will be a threat to security and sovereignty of the nation, a senior government official said on Thursday.

During a roundtable with startups organised by Start-up Policy Forum, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), Secretary S Krishnan said that the funding of startups especially in growth and later stage is crucial for entities in the deeptech space like cyber security.

"There is a crucial story, especially in something like cyber security. The crucial story is that you have to have an independent resource within the country. You can't afford not to have it. This is not something where you can actually take it from other countries. It becomes a threat to our own sovereignty," Krishnan said.

He was talking about the challenges that the government faced while financing startups and the need for the alignment of support with the state's strategic requirements.

"It (importing cyber security resources) becomes a threat to our security to actually have to take it from any country, even a friendly country ... entire suite of offerings which you need for cyber security, eventually you have to have the capacity. There clearly the kind of financing which is required in the later stage becomes very important," Krishnan said.

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He said financing issues will be the same in certain areas of deep tech, like AI or quantum or any of the emerging technologies.

"The government, as an organisation, sometimes finds it difficult because, ultimately, we are spending public money. All of you, including me, we all pay taxes so we would like to know how public money is being apportioned and spent. We have every right to ask that," Krishnan said.

He said that startups may consider that government processes are too rigid but have to meet certain tests.

Krishnan said there are several ministries that are running start-up programs which create overlapping functions among the government departments.

He said the engagement of various government departments both at the centre and state level provides multiple financing windows but at the same time it leads to startups wasting a lot of their time chasing for funds under different programmes.