Cybersecurity: A big concern for e-governance in India?

While electronic governance (e-governance) is a valuable tool in the hands of the Indian government to deliver public services in an efficient manner, it is struggling to achieve desired growth as it is still grappling with security issues with newer vulnerabilities being discovered in e-governance projects.

Surendra Singh, Regional Director – India & SAARC, Websense, Inc., said, “For safe and cyber secure e-governance services in India, there is a need for robust data security practices to help the user to control and secure confidential government data like citizen details, land records, police information, etc from inadvertent or malicious changes and deletions or unauthorized disclosure. Moreover, India needs a well-articulated cybersecurity policy to prevent security breaches.”

Many organized international criminal and terrorist groups now actively use computers and the internet to direct an advanced, coordinated attack against computers that operate the civilian critical infrastructure and government agencies posing immense challenges to those who are mandated to protect the IT asset.