Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today launched first NIC-CERT, a setup of National Informatics Centre to prevent and predict cyber attacks on government utilities. <br/><br/>Launching it at a function in New Delhi, Mr Prasad said, NIC-CERT has been setup with the objective of creating a comprehensive framework that integrates world class security components and inbuilt threat intelligence for detection, prevention and incident response. Using the tools, the team will correlate events that would help in generating a canvas of the attack surface and identify the vulnerabilities and possible exploits.<br/><br/> He emphasised that for responding to the cyber attacks of today, the Government needs an agile and responsive eco-system. The gathered intelligence assimilated with the knowledge of the open web would give the CERT the ability prevent and predict attacks. <br/><br/>The Minister said that as part of its Digital India initiatives, the Government has introduced a lot of its services online. Although, he mentioned that in the recent past there has been an exponential growth in cyber attacks leading to concerns of data theft which led to the Government drafting the Data protection Act.