Defense. Menon observed that this cooperation was less formidable than it sounded because the United States was years ahead of India in many fields; further, while many of the U.S. organizations are statutorily tasked with certain responsibilities against terrorism, including cyberterrorism and infrastructure protection, this is not so in India, which has some way to go.

This point was reiterated by Roddam Narasimha when he noted that the United States and India have different IT and communications infrastructure vulnerabilities, because they are at different stages of using networks. The Indian system is still less network dependent, so parallel mechanical systems are still operational. Yet there is widespread agreement that in both countries the vulnerabilities are very great and cybersecurity is still weak. This is one area where in order to ensure greater security, international cooperation is essential, although the mechanisms for doing this are not yet strong.