Army approves in-principle encrypted Cloud storage system

The Army Headquarters has given in-principle approval for setting up a highly encrypted Cloud system for the force, similar to that of Google, which will store personal as well operational data.
While earlier, the plan was to store non-classified information of every Indian soldier, Army sources said plans are on to even put operational data.
"In-principal approval has been given. Infrastructure As A System (IAAS) will be in place by July but until the regional data centres come in place, the complete cloud computing may not reach its desired level," sources said.
They said once active, it will help in getting real time data analysis at forward positions.

The Army has already initiated a full-fledged digitalisation programme under which every unit and each soldier would become digitally savvy. Each Indian Army unit will have data capability with high bandwidth connectivity.
Apart from these, the Army is also working on a data-radio set that can transmit video from a border post in LoC or the Line of Actual Control to the headquarters here live, they said.

"The Army has already initiated programmes to connect every soldier to its secluded central data bank through hard-wired links," sources said, adding that a digital literacy programme has been initiated.
Presently, all Army battalion headquarters are connected through the Wide Area Network (WAN) which provides secure communications between units through a desktop-to-desktop messaging application.

Another key project of the Army is Mobile Cellular Communication System (MCCS) which was introduced in 2007 on a trial basis in Jammu, under the 16 Corps headquarters.
It is currently being spread across the Kashmir sector under 15 Corps and sources say 70 per cent of the work has been completed.
The plan is to spread it to other Corps, sources said.
MCCS is a CDMA-based system and offers more secrecy, besides better protection against hacking.