294 govt websites hacked in Jan-Oct

Government says it has taken various steps to improve cyber security in the country

The government today said 294 websites belonging to various ministries and government departments were hacked in the January-October 2012 period.

"A total number of 201, 303, 308 and 294 websites belonging to various ministries and departments in the government were hacked during the year 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 (till October), respectively," Minister of State for Communications and IT Milind Deora said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

Recently, during May-June, 2012, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks were launched against a number of government websites by various hacker groups, he added.

Deora said the government has taken various steps to improve cyber security in the country.

"Various proactive and reactive steps have been taken by government to minimise the damage caused by these cyber attacks. These steps include strengthening security of the network infrastructure in the government, immediate actions to recover from the damage caused due to cyber attacks, maintaining disaster recovery sites for continuing business operations etc," he said.

The government has also established National Watch and Warning System in the form of CERT-In, legal framework in the form of Information Technology Act, 2000 to address issues related to cyber security and capacity development in cyber security and training for system/network administrators, law enforcement and judicial officials.

"A "Crisis Management Plan for countering cyber attacks and cyber terrorism" is under implementation by all ministries/departments of Central Government, state government and all their organisations and critical sectors," Deora said.

He added that an annual outlay (2012-13) of Rs 45.2 crore has been provided for cyber security in the budget of Department of Electronics and Information Technology.