Govt restricts foreign firms from conducting IT security audits of critical sectors
By MYBRANDBOOK
The government has ordered the ministries and departments handling India's critical infrastructure to avoid hiring foreign firms to conduct IT security audits of its systems and networks. This is in view of the recent cyber attack on Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. It is also said that Indian firms empanelled for auditing will require clearance from domestic spy agency, Intelligence Bureau (IB) to rule out any foreign links.
Security audits in all the ministries and critical sectors are carried out to ensure that country's information infrastructure is not vulnerable to attacks by hackers and that all the systems have a secure government firewall. Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) — under the purview of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology — has prepared a list of auditing firms in consultation with the IB. In case any government department is planning to hire firms outside of the list, security vetting by the IB has also been made mandatory.
Further it has been observed that critical sectors are facing threats from multiple sources and increasing attacks on the systems are organised and targeted with the help of criminals and State actors to reap immense benefits out of information compromise or espionage. The cyber criminals may carry out fraud, conduct espionage to steal state and military secrets and disrupt critical infrastructures by exploiting the vulnerabilities in any system. Worse yet, hackers can cover their tracks so that they cannot be traced and in a post-attack situation, is extremely difficult to prove whether the cyber criminal is an individual, a gang or a group of State actors.
According to the government documents, the public sector, although increasingly relying on IT, has not fully awakened to the challenges of security. Economic stability depends on uninterrupted operations of banking, finance, critical infrastructure such as power generation and distribution, transport systems of rail, road, air and sea which are critically reliant on information technology. Even though the focus has been on improving systems and providing e-governance services by various institutions, the IT networks and business processes have not placed the desired emphasis on information security.
Singapore to remove One-Time Passwords from Bank Accounts
According to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, clients who utilise secur...
Is 375 million Airtel subscribers database breached?
When a hacker claims to have accessed and put up for sale a customer databa...
The government of India intends to construct a single portal f
A single portal will be launched by the Indian government to list all of it...
OpenAI offers GPT-4o, a faster model available to all users at
GPT-4o, a faster and more sophisticated AI model, is made available to all...
ICONS OF INDIA : RISHAD PREMJI
Rishad Premji is Executive Chairman of Wipro Limited, a $11.3 billion ...
Icons Of India : AMIT CHADHA
Amit Chadha serves as the CEO and Managing Director of L&T Technology ...
Icons Of India : ASHISH KUMAR CHAUHAN
Ashish kumar Chauhan, an Indian business executive and administrator, ...
BSE - Bombay Stock Exchange
The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) is one of India’s largest and oldest...
CERT-IN - Indian Computer Emergency Response Team
CERT-In is a national nodal agency for responding to computer security...
C-DOT - Center of Development of Telematics
India’s premier research and development center focused on telecommu...
Indian Tech Talent Excelling The Tech World - Sundar Pichai, CEO- Alphabet Inc.
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet Inc.,...
Indian Tech Talent Excelling The Tech World - Rajiv Ramaswami, President & CEO, Nutanix Technologies
Rajiv Ramaswami, President and CEO of Nutanix, brings over 30 years of...
Indian Tech Talent Excelling The Tech World - NIKESH ARORA, Chairman CEO - Palo Alto Networks
Nikesh Arora, the Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, is steering ...