Mubashir Bukhari
Srinagar (NVI): In order to prevent cyber attacks, Jammu and Kashmir government is planning to conduct security audit of all the departmental websites before hosting them online.
According to the official documents accessed by NVI, Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has asked all the Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) of states and union territories to regularly audit the government websites.
“All the government websites and applications are to be audited with respect to cyber security prior to their hosting. Auditing of these websites and applications has to be conducted regularly to check any attempt of hacking,” read a document.
Besides, the Union government has also formulated Crisis Management Plan to assist state and Union Territory government’s including Jammu and Kashmir in countering cyber attacks and ‘cyber terrorism’.
“Government has launched a Cyber Swachhta Kendra (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre). The centre is providing free tools to remove malicious programs,” according to the document.
Government has also empanelled 90 security organizations to support and audit implementation of Information Security Best Practices.
Around 44 mock drills have been conducted by government departments including finance, defence, power, telecom, transport, energy, space and information technology, to prevent cyber attacks.
Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has also issued alerts and advisories regarding latest cyber threats from locations including Algeria, Brazil, China, France, Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, USA and Vietnam.
“It has been observed that attackers are compromising computer systems located in different parts of the world and use masquerading techniques and hidden servers to hide the identity of actual systems from which the attacks are being launched,” the document read.
A government official said all the departments were taking measures through their information technology team to secure their websites from hacking attempts.
“There have been many incidents when government websites have been hacked. All the departments are taking various measures to secure the department data on their websites,” he said.
