Telecom departments not bothered about cyber security
late Tribunal (TDSAT), National Institute of Communication Finance (NICF), National Telecommunications Institute (NTIPRIT), BSNL, MTNL, ITI Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL), Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC), Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) and others.
In its latest order that the DOT sent on 17 July to 20 establishments, it has again requested them to urgently submit a security audit report of their websites. “The requisite information is still awaited although eight months have passed. Accordingly, the custodians of all websites and portals under the ambit of DOT are once again requested to provide the valid security audit certificate. In case a valid security certificate is not available, immediate necessary action may be taken to get the security audit of the portals concerned to be done on a priority,” the order reads.
The Union government, in June, had issued advisory warning about a largescale cyber attack against individuals and businesses, where attackers were likely to use Covid-19 as a bait to steal personal and financial information.
It is not that Indian organisations have not seen massscale organised cyber attacks before. In 2012, hackers had hijacked the websites of the Supreme Court, the Ministry
of Communications and Information Technology, the Department of Telecommunications, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress in coordinated distributed denial-ofservice (DDOS) strikes. As per a response given by the Ministry of Electronics and Technology to the Rajya Sabha in March this year, in the last five years, as many as 129,747 Indian websites have been hacked.