The world is today facing a grave threat from the ever increasing threats posed by cyber crime. Cyber crime today is posing a challenge to the security agencies as well as the entire community – children, students, youth, elderly & professionals alike. Technological nature of the crime coupled with higher intellect of the criminal elements involved in such crimes, combine to make a lethal mix which is difficult not only to comprehend but to tackle for the police force as well as the members of the society at large too. The requirement of the times is to follow a comprehensive and effective strategy to completely engulf and tackle this menace. The first prong of this strategy has to be empowering the police force to contain this crime effectively and for proper detection of occurring offences. This will involve regular training and updating of the skills of the police personnel in policing the virtual world. The second and very important prong is the need for making citizens aware regarding the dangers of cyber space usage without proper care and precaution. This will ensure that cyber crime is effectively prevented. The third and significant prong of this strategy is educating the youth and children for long term safeguards against cyber based offences. This can be done by introducing a well defined and designed syllabus as part of their curriculum, as an optional subject. This will make the children and youth better “Netizens” along with good citizens and will assist in controlling cyber offences in the long run. The fourth and final prong of this strategy is providing secure and free cyber security services to the populace at large – like free web site audit, developing free security apps etc. This will give confidence to the public that the security establishment and the law of the land is making all out efforts to secure their existence in the cyber world too. This will ensure that the cyber crime menace if effectively contained and even countered. This four pronged strategy is the best way forward in the battle to secure the cyber space for safe citizen use and existence. It has been effectively put to practice by the Police Radio Training School at Indore with encouraging results. However this needs to be replicated at a much larger level so that it covers the entire country. This needs to be done very fast too – as time is a luxury that society does not have regarding the countering of the ever increasing cyber crime threat.
