If humans cannot hack it AI surely will.

India is going digital. Every citizen has a personal 12 digit number based on photographs, prints of all 10 fingers and iris scans. The country will become cashless so that every transaction, however trivial or personal, will be on record and the Goods and Services Tax will ensure taxes are collected in the beginning, even if the goods remain unsold at the end. Everything will be online which, we have been assured, is perfectly safe. Trouble is that most people do not possess the laser like intelligence of our politicians and civil servants and so are totally bewildered. Price Waterhouse Cooper has already found many security gaps in the IT infrastructure of GST. We are repeatedly assured by our rulers that all the information on citizens is completely secure from hacking. Is it? Seems that a lot of foreign companies hold all the identity details of citizens. Over 4.8 billion customer records have been exposed by companies worldwide, since 2013. The National Security Agency of the US hacked into SWIFT, the international system of transferring money into banks. In turn, hackers got hold of the files and released them on the internet. No need to go to so much trouble in India. Bank data of over 10 million Indians is up for sale at the rate of 20 paise each. Indians are forced to link their biometric identity details with their bank accounts, which means they are easily accessible to whoever wants them. On the other hand, our officials may well be right that the identity details are fully secure. Why? Because terrorists can get their own biometric identity numbers quite easily. Why bother with hacking and forging when you can get your own 24 carat identity card directly from the government. Our motto is 'atithi devo bhava', which means 'a guest is god'. Including terrorists it seems. When the US government cannot secure its Social Security Number from identity thieves what chance do Indians have? Not much, wrote Sucheta Dalal. However, while our lives are open books terrorists are using encrypted phones which our genius officials cannot break into. They have sent one such phone to the US for deciphering. Why? When the US police could not crack an iPhone, belonging to the San Bernadino attacker, they paid NSO Group from Israel to crack it. Israelis seem to be masters of cracking into any phone however encrypted it maybe. Sending the phone to the US is just covering up the crime. Why? The answer is to build a robust and resilient cyber system which will protect our citizens. Human beings get tired but Artificial Intelligence can work day and night. Soon AI will be able to break any security.