Alarmed over the security breach at the National Security Council Secretariat, the Union Home Ministry has come out with stringent cyber-security guidelines that prohibit use of personal laptops, palmtops, electronic notebooks and internet or bluetooth enabled mobile phones in government offices. It advocates limited use of internet which is not to be connected to the organization network under any circumstances.

Under the ‘Computer Security Guidelines 2006’, compiled by R N Behura, Joint Director, Intelligence Bureau, nobody is allowed to enter government offices with bluetooth and WiFi enabled mobile phones and officials cannot bring pen drives or flash drives to their place of work.

In a letter to ministries last month, Cabinet Secretary B K Chaturvedi directed that a nodal cyber-security officer (of the joint secretary level) be appointed in each department. Audit of such cyber space measures has been entrusted to Rajiv Mathur, Special Director, Intelligence Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs. The letter admits to serious vulnerability in government computer systems or networks in the various ministries due to theft of hardware containing sensitive data, data compromise, information stealing with remote access, spoofing by intruders, intentional cross-connection between the organization local area network (LAN) and the Internet, and defacement of various official cites.

Despite these measures, the website of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) was hacked on October 5. The hacker defaced the website and left a message in Arabic, saying: “Pablim 77 was here!!! H4XOR3D (sworded).” As many as 4,197 Indian websites were hacked this year in comparison to 3,006 in 2005. Never before had so many websites been hacked.

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