Govt orders security audit of computers, vetting of staff

The government has ordered security audit of official computers and vetting of staff of major ministries and departments following detection of corporate espionage. The decisions have been taken at a meeting convened by Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth and attended by top officials, including Home Secretary L C Goyal, on Tuesday. It was also decided the present access control mechanism in the ministries and departments will undergo sweeping changes. Electronic surveillance will be upgraded to ensure a “leak-proof” system, official sources said. Each ministry and department will appoint a joint secretary-level officer as departmental security officer to ensure foolproof security of official documents and computers.

The meeting decided that manual of departmental security instructions prepared by the home ministry will be issued to each of the ministry and department, sources said. Cracking down on a suspected case of corporate espionage, Delhi Police on Thursday arrested two junior oil ministry officials and three other persons for allegedly leaking classified government documents to energy companies.

On Friday last, two energy consultants Santanu Saikia and Prayas Jain and five senior executives from top energy firms identified as Shailesh Saxena from RIL, Vinay Kumar from Essar, K K Naik from Cairns, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from ADAG Reliance were arrested.

A casual worker in the Defence Ministry has also been arrested for allegedly providing forged identity card to a key accused in the Petroleum Ministry leaks case.