14 DAY TRIAL // The government of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh wants to ensure that hackers will have a hard time breaching their official websites and it's determined to implement a “security firewall” to protect them.
Khaleej Times reports that on February 17, just before the annual state budget was presented, hackers illegally accessed 21 government sites, administrators struggling for a week to restore 15 of the affected domains, the remaining 6 still being investigated.
Officials say that they’re aware of the fact that the hackers have no intent of causing damage to the data stored on their servers. The hacktivist simply added some extra webpages that hosted their protest messages.
Even though there were no financial losses recorded and the government determined that the hackers only wanted to demonstrate their skills, they’re preparing some security measures that will prevent future incidents.
Authorities decided to perform periodic security audits, create walls to secure web applications, and monitor traffic with the purpose of locating the origin of potential attacks.
A committee was formed by members of the state's Information Technology and Communications department, Nasscom, the National Informatics Centre, Data Centre Operator (Wipro) and experts from Cyber Security Works.
A draft will be made available by March 10 for all the stakeholders, allowing them to provide feedback regarding the implementation of the new policies.
Wipro was already contracted to monitor Internet traffic for unusual activities in order to predict and mitigate attacks before they can cause any damage.
With the large number of attacks that have taken place worldwide against government-owned websites, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that measures are taken. Most likely, other Indian states and other countries will follow the example set by the Andhra Pradesh government, if they haven’t done so already.