What is CERT-In?
Indian Computer Emergency Response Team
Definition
CERT-In is India’s national agency for cybersecurity incident response and guidelines. It issues directions on logging, reporting, and data-handling practices for organisations operating in India.
Why it matters for Indian fleets
CERT-In-aligned practices and India-hosted data give fleets assurance that their operational data is handled to national security standards.
What CERT-In is and what it issues
CERT-In is India’s national nodal agency for computer security incident response, operating under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. It coordinates response to cybersecurity incidents, issues advisories and vulnerability notes, and in April 2022 issued directions that created concrete operational obligations for organisations operating in India.
Those directions are what make CERT-In relevant to a fleet platform rather than a purely governmental concern. They are binding on service providers, intermediaries, data centres and body corporates, which includes telematics providers and, in relevant respects, the fleets using them.
The obligations that actually bite
- Incident reporting within six hours of noticing or being notified of a reportable cybersecurity incident. Six hours is a genuinely short window: it means an out-of-hours detection path and a named responsible person, not a process that starts on the next working day.
- Log retention for 180 days, with ICT system logs maintained and stored within India, and made available to CERT-In when required.
- Clock synchronisation to NTP servers of NIC or NPL, or servers traceable to them. This is a small requirement with outsized consequence: logs from systems whose clocks disagree cannot be correlated into a reliable timeline during an investigation.
- Designated point of contact for CERT-In correspondence.
- KYC and record-keeping obligations for certain categories of provider.
Why this matters when choosing a fleet platform
A fleet platform holds continuous location history, driver identity, and in many deployments cab-facing video. That is an attractive target and a serious breach if it is exposed, so the security posture of the vendor is part of the fleet’s own risk rather than a detail of procurement.
The questions worth asking are concrete. Where are logs stored, and for how long. What is the incident notification path to the customer, and how fast. Who is the designated contact. How is access to location history and cab video scoped and audited internally.
These sit alongside DPDP Act obligations rather than replacing them: CERT-In is largely about incident response and evidence, DPDP is about lawful collection and the rights of the people the data describes. A fleet needs both answered, and they are usually answered by different documents.
Frequently asked questions
What is CERT-In responsible for?
CERT-In is India’s national agency for cybersecurity incident response, operating under MeitY. It coordinates incident response, issues advisories and vulnerability notes, and has issued binding directions covering incident reporting, log retention and related obligations for organisations operating in India.
What is the CERT-In six-hour reporting rule?
Under the April 2022 directions, reportable cybersecurity incidents must be reported to CERT-In within six hours of being noticed or brought to notice. In practice this requires an out-of-hours detection and escalation path and a named responsible person, not a next-working-day process.
How long must logs be retained under CERT-In directions?
ICT system logs must be maintained securely for a rolling period of 180 days and stored within India, and made available to CERT-In when required in connection with an incident.
How is CERT-In different from the DPDP Act?
CERT-In directions are about cybersecurity incident response, logging and evidence. The DPDP Act is about lawful processing of personal data and the rights of the individuals it describes. A fleet platform needs to satisfy both, and they are usually addressed by different controls and documents.
Related MoboSafe workflows
Review the documented product scope and setup requirements for these related operational tasks.
Organisation & Access Controls
Configure organisations, branches, roles, permissions, company policies, notifications, security, privacy, billing, and module settings.
Fleet APIs & Integrations
Configure MoboSafe integrations, API access, device connections, connection tests, usage monitoring, and dashcam backup settings.
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