Plan to secure communication systems

The Centre is considering the creation of a secure communications ecosystem for its officials, especially those working in the defence sector.

One of the proposals is mandating the use of mobile phones manufactured by Indian companies for official communication. The government will also be providing a secure email service to its officials.

“The view is that communications for vital departments of the government need to be secured… a lot of the companies store user data on a server in a foreign country, including China,” a senior official, who requested anonymity, told The Hindu.

Data protection law

The suggestion on mobiles came up at a meeting called by Minister for Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad with senior officials in the department, including representatives of Cert-In, earlier this month. The Army now uses secure landline phones to communicate.

“We are already working on a data protection law. The Minister wants us to also look at ways to secure communication between the vital government departments, such as defence,” the official said.

The official said the recent move to seek details of security and safety processes followed by various handset manufacturers selling smartphones in the country is the first step in this exercise.

While further details are to be worked out, there is a possibility that the firm supplying mobile phones to government departments will be asked to customise certain features and adhere to certain specifications.

On the email policy of the government, the official said, “It will the largest service of its kind for the government with a user base of 5 million… an email id will be assigned to all officials at the Centre and State level through National Informatics Centre.”

A pilot of this service has already been done and is running for a select user base, including some senior officials. “The primary trigger behind the policy is control of data which resides on servers outside India and on servers beyond the control of the Government of India,” the official said.

The email will offer enhanced security authentication mechanisms such as geo-fencing and device mapping. “A centralised email architecture across the government will help in securing Government data,” the official explained.

While currently the primary domain name used is ‘@gov.in’, the government plans to introduce local languages and sarkar.bharat domain.