Subject: Internal Security

The rise of social media platforms and encrypted messaging services has created unprecedented security challenges, with over 43,797 complaints filed against WhatsApp alone in early 2024, highlighting the urgent need for comprehensive digital security measures.

Measures already in place

Law-Enforcement Level

• Key Initiatives:

  • Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C)
  • State-level cyber cells
  • AI-based social media monitoring in Bengaluru and Maharashtra

• How They Mitigate Risk:

  • Enables real-time flagging of misinformation, radicalisation, or threats

Platform Self-Regulation

• Key Initiatives:

  • End-to-end encryption
  • Default two-factor authentication
  • Suspicious login alerts
  • Forwarding limits on WhatsApp
  • Media labeling features on Telegram

• How They Mitigate Risk:

  • Reduces mass forwarding, account hijacks, and phishing attempts

Corporate & Civil Society

• Key Initiatives:

  • ISO 27001-compliant social media policies
  • Red-team cybersecurity drills
  • Brand monitoring tools
  • Digital literacy programs like Cyber Swachhta Kendra

• How They Mitigate Risk:

  • Prevents insider security breaches
  • Educates citizens to identify and reject fake news

Additional remedies

• Privacy-preserving traceability: explore metadata escrow or homomorphic hashing so courts can verify originators without weakening full message encryption.

• Trusted digital identity on-ramp: phased KYC for high-reach accounts (influencers, political ads) to curb botnets yet keep anonymous speech for ordinary users.

• Algorithmic accountability law: mandate explainability audits of content-recommendation engines to detect amplification of extremist or deep-fake material.

• Federated threat-intel exchange: real-time API where platforms push hash-sets of violent or CSAM imagery to law-enforcement and smaller networks, closing migration gaps.

• In-app civic prompts: nudge users to read articles before sharing, flag probable deep-fakes, show fact-checks inline—evidence suggests a 15–20% drop in misinformation sharing.

• State-level dedicated cyber forensics labs with blockchain-based chain-of-custody to speed prosecution of trolling, sextortion and investment scams.

• Regular third-party security audits of social networks with public scorecards (akin to financial stress tests) to spur continual hardening.

These layered legal, technical and behavioural measures can balance national security, platform responsibility and user privacy, making the social-media ecosystem far more resilient to exploitation.