The Cyber Coordination Centre (CyCord) under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Thursday directed the Government officials not to use Chinese App Zoom Meeting platform, widely used for videoconferencing.
The advisory also cautioned private individuals to use the Zoom App in secure way to prevent data leakages by third party. India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) has already red-flagged the use of this Chinese app, apprehending chances of data leakage and third party monitoring.
Zoom is a not a safe platform and advisory of Cert-In on the February 6 and March 20 may be referred to, it said.
“Those private individuals who still would like to use Zoom for private purpose may kindly follow the following guidelines,” said the MHA & Cert-In Circular, banning use of Zoom App in Government video conferences.
The Cert-In issued a set of technical safeguards to prevent the possible infiltration or hacking by the third party. “The document makes reference to earlier advisories of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team(Cert-In) and states that Zoom is not a safe platform. The guidelines have been issued to safeguard private individuals who would still like to use the platform for private purposes. The broad objective of this advisory is to prevent any unauthorised entry into a Zoom Conference Room and prevent the unauthorised participant to carry out malicious attacks on the terminals of other users in the conference,” said the MHA’s advisory.