New Delhi: In an effort to put a check on hacking from the neighbouring countries, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has decided to conduct audits of all government websites and portals every six months, a senior government official said.
The decision on the regular audit was taken following a crucial meeting that took place in the home ministry recently. Senior officials from the home ministry, the home ministry’s cyber security unit, and the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) were present at the meeting. “The regular audit every six months will definitely keep all government websites and portals protected from hackers. It will also fully protect the government database,” an official said.
Such audits will also be able to detect any mischievous activities carried out by foreign-based hackers, the official said. On several occasions, hackers from China and Pakistan allegedly hacked several government websites.
Significantly, BPR&D is conducting a hackathon on 5G for the purpose of developing tools for addressing the challenges and issues being faced by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). In the Hackathon, nine problem statements have been formulated and the Department of Telecom (DOT) with its subsidiary Telecom Centre of Excellence (TCOE) have joined hands with BPR&D to conduct the Hackathon with students, startups & MSMEs.
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“The forthcoming Hackathon on 5G would definitely strengthen the law enforcing agencies as far as their investigation procedure, contacting their headquarters from even the remotest places of the country is concerned,” said Balaji Srivastava, director general of BPR&D.
The Hackathon will involve three stages of ideas screening — Stages I and II shall be done in virtual mode whereas Stage III will be held at nodal centres in a physical mode where the 5G testbeds/Private Networks/Labs would be available.
The jury for all three stages shall comprise members from BPR&D, I4C, DOT, and Industry. Post completion of Stage III, the final names of one winner for each problem statement with an award money of Rs 1.5 lakh will be announced during the Valedictory Session in February 2024.
The Home Ministry and affiliated organizations and different units have identified nine major problem statement that includes developing a robust framework to get real-time location of mobile users with an internal authentication App, 3D capturing (AR/VR/XR) of crime scenes using 5G enabled devices also used for capacity building and operations, intelligent traffic management — 5G enabled AI cameras and crime scene management including 3D (AR/VR), creating software routing security framework for private network as well as 5G communications.
“The Hackathon on 5G will explore ways to find solutions to the problem statement. The government of India is fully committed to augmenting the technology prowess of our Law Enforcement Agencies and creating a cyber-safe country as cyber security has become an essential aspect of security-related affairs, internationally,” an official said.
