India does not like its top bureaucrats to use US technologies such as Google or Yahoo -- for "security" reasons.Very interesting article from yesterday's WSJ, FYI,DavidSeptember 2, 2013, 12:00 PM India to Curb Use of Gmail by Officials By R. Jai Krishna European Pressphoto Agency Kapil Sibal during an event in New Delhi, May 13.

To prevent vital information from being hacked,India will urge 400,000 of the country’s top bureaucrats to route all official email through Indian government servers as part of a new policy to be issued soon, the country’s information technology secretary told The Wall Street Journal.

It’s not yet clear which officials the policy will focus on, but it is likely to be those who handle crucial decision-making in the federal government.

The move comes as government officials have made increasing use in their official work of private email services offered by U.S.companies such such as Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc.

Officials are issued email addresses through the National Informatics Centre, an agency that implements the government’s IT projects and hosts its web servers. But many Indian officials appear to prefer private e-mail services, particularly Google’s Gmail service. One official told The Wall Street Journal that this was due to the fact that the government servers rely on outdated technology that can result in delays in receiving and sending email.

An NIC official wasn’t immediately available to comment on this criticism.

Screenshot Kapil Sibal and his two juniors have private email addresses listed on the telecom department’s official website.

Even the federal minister for communications and information technology, Kapil Sibal, as well as his two junior ministers, have private email addresses listed on the telecom department’s official website.

The move to go back to using the government email service is aimed at “beefing up security,” said information technology secretary J. Satyanarayana, the most senior bureaucrat in the ministry’s Department of Electronics & Information Technology, on Friday. Among other duties, the department is supposed to work on “securing India’s cyberspace.”

“The policy will outline the dos and don’ts and the precautions to be taken for using email for official communications,” Mr. Satyanarayana told The Wall Street Journal.

The move could potentially make some officials less accessible via e-mail as communications routed to the official addresses quite frequently bounce back.

It’s also not yet clear whether the new policy will apply to political posts, such as India’s many ministers.

The development comes months after the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged the existence of a secret cyber surveillance program called Prism that is run by the National Security Agency. AU.S.official has said that the program is aimed at gathering intelligence on foreign targets.

The information-gathering efforts have involved tapping data on the consumers of services provided by technology companies such as Google Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp., according to documents accessed by The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers.

The technology companies named in the NSA documents have denied giving the U.S.government direct access to their computer servers. They have also denied any knowledge of the Prism surveillance program.

According to a report in The Guardian, the program monitored 38 embassies and diplomatic missions in the United States, including the Indian embassy.

In the wake of that revelation,New Delhi expressed concerns to Washington regarding the violation of the privacy of its citizens.

Last week, Mr. Sibal, India’s technology minister, told lawmakers in the upper house of Parliament that the issue was discussed during strategic affairs talks between the two nations on June 24. The U.S.told India that “only broad patterns of telephony and Internet traffic” are monitored, Mr. Sibal said in Parliament in response to a question.

“United States officials maintained that data content/content of emails are not accessed or not monitored under these surveillance programs; therefore, it is not a violation of privacy,” said a statement from Mr. Sibal.

India was also informed that U.S. agencies need to get additional authorization in order to access the content of any of the communications being tracked, Mr. Sibal said.

Even so, Indian officials in charge of cyber security appear to be concerned that Indian government communications routed through private servers could be accessed.

The National Informatics Centre has drafted a set of rules to govern the use of email by officials. After federal ministries sign off, the policy will be put into effect, Mr. Satyanarayana said.

Cybersecurity experts agree that the government should bar the use of private e-mail.

“This is a step in the right direction for protecting critical and sensitive organizational and national information,” said Shree Parthasarathy, a senior director for risk services at the consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd..

Mr. Parthasarathy noted that it’s not clear where the sensitive data that passes through private services is stored.

“Anybody who uses these services will not have a very clear view or control on the data,” he said via email. “Organizations who allow such usage have no control over this infrastructure and this can lead to loss of information and leakage of sensitive information.”

– Prasanta Sahu contributed to this post.

Follow WSJ India on @WSJIndia.

-- David VincenzettiCEOHacking TeamMilan Singapore Washington DCwww.hackingteam.com