Indian Railways has started identifying officers who will form the ministry’s cyber security team. To contain online breaches, Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier directed every government department to pick personnel with technical aptitudes and train them in cyber security.
In a directive to all general managers, the Railway Board has said that the working of Indian Railways has been increasingly shifting to the ICT platform. Therefore, it has become necessary to secure the ICT infrastructure in order to safeguard critical information.
“It has been observed that, in recent times, an alarming increase has been seen in the number of breaches/attempted breaches to the ICT infrastructure of Govt Organisations. The Government of India, at the highest level, is also seized of the need for adequately and appropriately securing the ICT infrastructure,” the statement read.
It has, therefore, been decided that certain strength of officials from each Railway Unit with aptitude in ICT hardware, software, networking and compliances may be identified for forming the group for that Unit, to begin with. This group would work under the overall supervision of the nominated CISO (chief information security officer) of the Railway Unit,” the order stated.
During a presentation on the National Cyber Security Strategy 2020 on 1 September this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had directed that “every ministry has some personnel with technical aptitudes. These are to be identified and trained in Cyber Security Courses within six months. These should then form the cyber security nucleus of that Ministry.
