Delhi Police Headquarters has issued orders to its officers to discontinue the use of Gmail, Yahoo! and other e-mail services to ensure thesanctity of intra-office communications.
The order states that henceforth all officers will use email service of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) server only. The step to use NIC e-mail service has been taken in the aftermath of the recent espionage scandal, sources said.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has also conveyed to the Delhi Police top brass that police officers should only use NIC services for internal and official communications as Gmail and Yahoo! were susceptible to hacking.
According to the order circulated, this week, it is said that the officers should create an official e-mail ID on nic.in for exchanging mails and internal communication. Sources said the decision has been taken in view of the threat of cyber snooping and espionage, and strictly asked them to follow the orders.
The officers also believe that the possibility of snooping or hacking on international servers like Google or Yahoo!, which are operated from overseas, will be completely stopped. “The secret information can be accessed or seen by a hacker on accounts on Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! as they are linked with the foreign servers. The India-based server can protect it from any such practice,” an officer, who did not wish to be named, told The Pioneer.
The NIC is a premier information technology arm of the Government of India providing state-of-the-art solutions for information management and decision support in Government and corporate sector. It has played a pivotal role in steering e-governance applications in the Governmental departments at national, State and district levels, enabling the improvement in, and a wider transparency of, Government services. It is looked after by the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology.
It may recalled that at least 16 persons, including Government staff members and energy consultants, were arrested by Delhi Police for accessing secret and classified documents from different Central Ministries. The MHA had also cautioned Delhi Police, which is a one of the high-tech forces in the country, for protecting their internal communications system.