Ransomware attack: Computers safe, software patches installed, says govt

Ravi Shankar Prasad said there was no serious impact in India and the NIC is working fine

On Monday, the Centre said India's computer systems have largely escaped a massive global ransomware attack, and that state organisations managing government websites and building supercomputers have installed security patches issued by Microsoft Corp.

Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, "No serious impact in India of global cyber attack... The government's National Informatics System (NIC) is working fine."

The cyber attack that shut car factories, hospitals, shops and schools over the weekend has been less severe than anticipated in Asia, but industry professionals have flagged potential risks in the future.

Aruna Sundararajan, secretary of India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, told Reuters the government was constantly monitoring the situation and that a few stand-alone computers of a police department were "back in action" after being infected over the weekend.

It was not immediately clear what the police department did to secure its systems.

NIC, which builds and manages almost all government websites, and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, a premier research institute that has built supercomputers, have actively installed patches to immunise their Windows systems, Sundararajan said.

Her ministry has also asked chief information security officers of all organisations run by provincial governments to follow guidelines issued by New Delhi to tackle the issue.