NHA CEO RS Sharma says, data on CoWIN portal safe and secure

CEO of National Health Authority (NHA) and in-charge of the portal, RS Sharma said that the data on CoWIN portal are safe and secure.

“Whatever data we collect is very minimal like name, gender, mobile number…We don’t ask about marital status, address or about the pregnancy. No, such information is personally sensitive. So, whatever data we have are not secret data, but still we make sure that all the data which we have are encrypted and secure and safe,” said Sharma.

He also added that the data on the CoWIN cannot be downloaded. Download is only possible if someone is downloading the vaccine certificate and in that situation one needs to submit the OTP number. So data leak is very unlikely. Interestingly, the statement comes at a time when there are alleged reports of massive data leak across many countries by Israeli surveillance company NSO Group through its hacking spyware, Pegasus.

Sometime back in June also the Health Ministry had cleared the air about the CoWIN data leak. There were rumours that the data of 15 crore Indians have been put on sale after news circulated that a hacker group, ‘Dark Leak Market’, claimed through a tweet that it is reselling the data for $800, but it was not the original leaker.