Amid rising incidents of data breaches, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) secretary Alkesh Kumar Sharma on Monday said data privacy and security are the major issues which the government is tackling.
“Cybersecurity and data privacy are the major issues, which we have to deal with on a daily basis,” Sharma said, adding that data leaks were taking place every other day.
“It is essential to acknowledge the digital transformation and the challenges it poses. We are looking into data security and privacy issues so that no citizen becomes the victim of cybercrime,” Sharma added.
Sharma was speaking at the 20th Foundation Day of the government-owned National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), which is tasked with increasing internet penetration and adoption in the country.
Comments from the MeitY secretary assume significance in light of the recent alleged CoWIN-related data breach.The government said the leak was not from CoWIN but a data breach mimic through telegram bot.
When asked about the update on the CoWIN breach, Sharma said, “the investigation is still going on in the matter.”
Last week, reports cited the alleged data breach of CoWIN data through a telegram bot that was able to throw up citizens data upon giving phone numbers used to sign up on the CoWIN portal. The Telegram account, which has been inactive since Monday last week, showed the name of the person, the government identification used while getting the vaccination, vaccination centre, among other things.
Post the incident, minister of state for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar at a Financial Express.com conclave said, “a large part of the leaked data was fake and the investigation is going on to check if it was a deliberate attempt to mimic a breach.” He added that the investigation will be made public.
Last week, the Indian Express reported that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In),the nodal cyber security agency, was in discussions with at least 11 state governments that had developed their own databases during the Covid-19 pandemic. The agency was probing if the data leaks happened from the databases of these 11 states.
With regard to other development on the gaming self-regulatory organisations (SROs), MeitY secretary said the government would soon notify the SROs based on the applications. He did not comment on the timeline of notification of such SROs and whether the government has received any concrete applications with regard to that.
The government had notified the online gaming rules on April 6 and had given a three-months time to the industry to come up with their proposal for SROs. However, it has been two months, and till June 9, the government did not receive any applications from the industry on gaming SROs.
In case the industry fails to come up with a proposal for SROs, the government will get involved in such activity, Chandrasekhar had said.
The government will initially notify three SROs. The structure of SROs will involve government-approved entities including people with experience in online gaming, an educationist, an expert in the field of psychology, individuals dealing with protection of child rights, an individual with experience in the field of information and communication technology, and other relevant officials to be notified by the government.
On India’s technology stack such as UPI, Digilocker, and Aadhaar, Sharma said, four countries have signed a memorandum of understanding to adopt the Digital Public Infrastructure of India and many are showing interest.
