Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka Pranay Verma on Wednesday said that collective effort towards enhancing digital safety “becomes even more critical” now with the greater digitalization in both India and Bangladesh.

He said both India and Bangladesh move towards greater digitalization of their economy, society and governance, and the young and aspirational populations in both the countries move increasingly towards using the digital space for all their activities.

The high commissioner, along with state minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak attended the closing session of the “Cyber Maitree 2023” hosted by the ICT Division in Dhaka on Wednesday.

Cyber-Maitree is a unique platform and interface for sector experts and professionals from India and Bangladesh to collaborate for cyber security related training and exercises, said the envoy.

The high commissioner noted that Cyber-Maitree 2023 is particularly relevant in the context promoting exchange of knowledge, capacity building, building cyber resilience, identifying and addressing network vulnerabilities, and preparing cyber risk assessment and overall, in generating awareness about cyber security.

“All these will help the sector experts of both countries to safeguard the digital space and make it more feasible to safely leverage digital technologies to augment trade, investment and people-to-people engagement.”

He added that the joint collaborative exercises such as the Cyber-Maitree 2023 have allowed experts from India and Bangladesh to address the cross-section of several related domains such as cyber security, AI, ICT, and IT related human resource development.

These factors are integral to achieving digital connectivity and fulfilling the future aspirations of the youth in both countries, said Pranay Verma.

The high commissioner further laid emphasis on the fact that the India and Bangladesh relationship has reached new heights, with cooperation across several sectors, and with a focus on enhancing connectivity for economic growth and development.

Enhancing digital connectivity, is another facet of this effort, and to this end both countries are engaging through several initiatives, such as the Startup Exchange, the launch of the India-Bangladesh Startup Bridge, establishment of 12 High Tech Parks in Bangladesh, working on simplifying and integrating fin-tech and other innovative technologies.

In April 2022 India and Bangladesh signed a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) on information technology and electronics with a focus on strengthening cooperation in e-governance, m-governance, e-public service delivery, research, development and innovation, developing start-ups, capacity building and sharing best practices

The two countries have also signed a MoU on exchange of information on cyber-attacks and cyber security incidents, cyber security technology cooperation, cyber security policies and human resource development.

A delegation of the Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-In) visited Bangladesh for the event which was also attended by the cyber security experts, digital forensic scientists, IT professionals, student trainees and other stakeholders.