14 DAY TRIAL // All Indian government departments were instructed to audit their websites periodically in order to make sure that they are compliant with existent cyber security guidelines.
The order came from the Indian minister of communications Mr. Sachin Pilot, following a meeting with representatives from the Department of Information Technology, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the National Informatics Centre and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The meeting's main topic of discussion was the recent compromise of Indian websites, including the CBI's, by a group of Pakistani hackers.
On December 3, a group calling itself the "Pakistani Cyber Army" defaced over 270 websites belonging to Indian businesses, schools and other organizations.
The CBI website was one of the high profile targets and the hackers taunted India's premier law enforcement agency about the compromise.
The attacks were a retaliation to the "Indian Cyber Army," who on November 26, on the aniversary of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, defaced over 30 Pakistani government websites.
Criminal investigations have been launched in both countries in connection with the incidents and the Pakistani government even created a special task force led by the deputy director of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to handle the case.
The CBI website has been offline since the attack and the agency announced that it will only be restored after it undergoes a thorough security review.
The government is now concerned about the entire Web hosting platform operated by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), especially since the hackers claimed to have compromised the centre's servers.
According to an official press release from the government's Press Information Bureau (PIB), the NIC has been instructed to only continue hosting websites for which the responsible department produces security certifications.
These certifications are to be obtained periodically and CERT-In has established a team of 50 IT security auditors to handle the security reviews. The organization has also drafted a Crisis Management Plan, which contains a set of instructions to prevent and deal with cyber attacks directed at websites.