The Hyderabad police have urged government agencies to practise cyber hygiene and implement cyber security measures to prevent falling victim to scammers. The advice follows incidents where fraudsters attempted to steal funds or data by targeting the databases of public sector undertakings (PSUs) and a few government organisations.
According to the Joint Commissioner of Police for the Detective Division, Dr Gajarao Bhupal, government departments, and other organisations have been requested to practise good cyber hygiene.
“Employees should be able to differentiate between phishing emails and regular mail.” They should know the fundamentals, such as not clicking on emails from sources they don’t know. “Safety measures such as installing cyber security software will help to prevent hacking,” he said.
To protect the offices that deal with financial transactions or security-related issues from cyber or ransomware attacks, the police have requested them to set up cyber security teams.
“Departments dealing in money, PSU banks, government treasuries, and government agencies need advanced cyber security systems. Coordination with other significant agencies is being established to raise awareness,” said an official.
The Mahesh Bank case, in which fraudsters sent phishing emails and tricked the personnel into opening them, was one of many instances cited by the authorities. The gang had managed to access the server through the gateway and conduct transactions by stealing large sums of money. “The police spent about Rs 58 lakh on the case’s investigation. Consider how much money the government wastes due to negligence,” the senior official said
