“EV Charging Stations May Also Be Victims of ‘Cyber ​​Attacks'”

Are EV Charging Stations Susceptible to Cyber ​​Attacks?: The idea of ​​promoting next-generation electric vehicles and electric vehicles without EV charging stations is disingenuous. Hence, there is continuous emphasis on comprehensive development of EV charging infrastructure in India as well.

But in the midst of all this now the ‘Minister of Road Transport and Highways’ Nitin Gadkari of the Government of India has made a big statement, which may raise the concern of many.

In fact, in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari informed Parliament that electric vehicle or EV charging stations, like any other technological application, are highly susceptible to “cyber attacks and cyber security incidents”.

The Union Minister also said that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), which monitors cyber security incidents in the country, has received a report on defects in products and applications related to EV charging stations.

Are EV Charging Stations Susceptible to Cyber ​​Attacks?

He also said,

“In addition to warnings in this regard, advisories regarding various security measures have also been issued.”

“The government is fully aware of the threat of cyber attacks and all forms of hacking and is taking appropriate steps to counter them.”

We tell you that a notification was also issued recently, as per the instructions given, making it mandatory to share information of all cyber attacks and hacking incidents with CERT-In. Under this, organizations are mandated to share with CERT-IN all incidents of cybercrime within six hours.

Not only that, in 2021, the government has mandated virtual private network (VPN) service providers, data centers, virtual private server (VPS) providers and cloud service providers to collect and store user data for at least 5 years. Storage was also made mandatory.

We tell you that according to the latest data presented by the government, there are currently 6,586 public EV charging stations operating in the country. At the same time, there are a total of 21.7 lakh electric vehicles registered across various categories in India.

Meanwhile, Union Minister, Nitin Gadkari has informed that CERT-In has also prepared a ‘Cyber ​​Crisis Management Plan’ for all Ministries and Departments of the Central Government, State Governments and their agencies to counter cyber attacks.

This issue becomes more serious as according to government statistics, 2.08 lakh incidents related to cyber attacks were registered in the country in 2018, 3.94 lakh incidents in 2019, 11.58 lakh incidents in 2020. While the figure for 2021 was 14.03 lakh, it declined slightly to 13.91 lakh in 2022.