WannaCry ransomware: Key govt networks fully secured, assures IT secretary

The virus has affected more than 300,000 computers worldwide, however, with zero impact in India

The government has installed necessary security in batches to protect its key networks from the cyber attack by ransomware virus 'WannaCrypt', Information Technology Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said on Tuesday at the inaugural session of Broadband India Forum.

"On ransomware, since March, the government of India has been on high alert. We have already installed the necessary security in batches as far as the government key networks are concerned," said Sundararajan.

"CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team),the national agency which monitors and tracks this activity, has affirmed that in India, there were five or six instances, one of about 18 computers of the police in Andhra, as well as about five odd instances, one in Kerala where one of the Panchayat computers were affected," she told reporters.

The IT Secretary added that a multi-agency monitoring team is already continously monitoring and assessing the situation on a round-the-clock basis.

"We are strengthening our cyber security. After talking to Microsoft, we had asked people to install patch system in March. This ongoing 'WannaCrypt' attack not only had minimum, but nearly zero per cent impact," Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said yesterday.

Speaking about the IT sector, Sundararajan said: "The sector is continuing to grow at 7-8 per cent, it has been forecasted to grow at that rate. It has also created five lakh jobs in the last two years."

"There may be some changes in the profile of work or the profile of verticles within the IT sector because that is a dynamic sector. But we have it on categoric record from the industry that large scale job losses have not hampered at all. There is nothing unusual in the pattern of the employment scenario as far as the IT sector is concerned," she said.