Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Friday said the Government has barred the use of private servers for hosting Army websites following a cyber attack recently on an Army website where personal details of thousands of Army personnel are believed to have been compromised.
“It was a case of a private server which was used on outsourcing... We have issued instructions not to take private servers for hosting Army websites,” he said during Question Hour in the lok Sabha. He said that action has been taken in the matter, with the website being secured and hosted on the NIC network.
In March, the official website of Office of the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Officers) was believed to have been hacked compromising personal details of over 50,000 Army personnel, including the Chief of Army staff.
He said on Friday that the Government has taken a number of steps to protect confidential information pertaining to the Defence sector from cyber attacks and there were no reports of Defence sector networks being attacked by cyber hackers and foreign intelligence agencies.
Parrikar said there was no chance of hacking in Defence sector now as they were not connected to internet and well-secured. “There are no reports of Defence sector networks being attacked by cyber hackers and foreign intelligence agencies. However, cyber attacks are faced by internet connected personal computers and these relate to unauthorised data access, denial of service, compromise of logic credentials,” he said.
“To protect important and confidential data from cyber attack, the operational networks of the Armed Forces are air gapped from internet. Further, Defence Services have established Cyber Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) to prevent and react to cyber attacks,” Parrikar said.
The Minister also said that safeguards have been instituted in the form of audits and physical checks.