While Defence Ministry has its own separate secure email server, the External Affairs too may follow suit. The move comes amid concerns about rising cybercrime and hacking
incidents. Earlier this week, five million usernames and passwords of
Google were reported to have been leaked online by Russian hackers. Government is expected to route official communication through the National Informatics Centre's (NIC) email service.
DeitY has drafted the policy on use of email for government offices and
departments and views and comments of ministries concerned are being
taken on this, sources said.
Sources said the policy seeks to
protect large amount of critical government data and aims to make it
mandatory for government offices to communicate only on nic.in platform,
not on commercial email services Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc. The policy is expected to cover about 5-6 lakh Central and state
government employees for using the email service provided by NIC, they
added. To ensure smooth working of the NIC platform, DeitY will soon require about Rs 4-5 crore to ramp up NIC infrastructure.
Besides, a total investment of around Rs 50-100 crore would be required
for full operationability of the policy, including integrating emails
with cloud so that official data can be saved on a cloud platform and
can then be easily shared with the concerned government ministries and
departments.
Governments globally have also been trying to secure
their official communication post fallout of the Snowden saga, which
contended the US intelligence agencies used a secret data- mining
programme to monitor worldwide Internet data to spy on various
countries, including India.
Showing posts with label yahoo. Show all posts
Government May Ban Gmail and Yahoo Email Services For Official Use
Popular email services like Gmail and Yahoo! are likely to be banned for official use to safeguard critical and sensitive government data. A proposal to this effect is being moved by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) for Cabinet approval by month-end, sources said.
Government communication, barring those of Ministry of Defence and External Affairs, will be done using the platform of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), they added.
Yahoo Data Quantifies Android Usage
Yahoo had launched the Aviate launcher for Android platform earlier this year. The launcher automatically arranges your applications on your mobile phone and aggregates your personal and data.
Yahoo Labs and Aviate have now released interesting infographic on user behaviour. The data shows what kind of apps are used at what time of a day. According to the infographic, Google Maps usage shoots during the peaks later in the day, while clock app peaks in the morning and at night.
ahoo had launched the Aviate launcher for Android
platform earlier this year. The launcher automatically arranges your
applications on your mobile phone and aggregates your personal and data.
Yahoo
Labs and Aviate have now released interesting infographic on user
behaviour. The data shows what kind of apps are used at what time of a
day. According to the infographic, Google Maps usage shoots during the
peaks later in the day, while clock app peaks in the morning and at
night.
- See more at:
http://www.digit.in/apps/yahoo-aviate-infographic-shows-how-users-interact-with-their-phones-23725.html#sthash.BW0fBxom.dpufGmail, Yahoo Make Phone Number Mandatory For New Email Ids
World's most popular free email providers Gmail and Yahoo have made telephone number mandatory for creation of new email addresses in a bid to check spam. Any person wishing to create a new email id needs to provide a telephone number which Gmail and Yahoo use for verification. Google India spokesperson claimed giving phone number was optional but repeated attempts to create a new email address on Gmail by skipping the mobile number requirement failed.
The Gmail website said that
move to seek phone number is to check spam email senders. "In an effort
to protect our users from abuse, we sometimes ask users to prove they're
not a robot before they're able to create or sign in to accounts.
Having this additional confirmation via phone is an effective way to
keep spammers from abusing our systems," the website said.
Google
has also limited number of accounts that a person using one telephone
number can create but the website did not specify the maximum number of
email account it will allow. While for Gmail a person can give either
telephone or mobile number, for a new Yahoo it is now mandatory to have a
mobile number.
"At Yahoo, we are
committed to the security of our users. We ask our users to provide
their mobile number at registration as a secondary means of
authentication, in addition to their password. We would only use the
number if we see any unusual activity on the account," Yahoo
spokesperson said. Internet Service Providers Association of India said
that there is no regulatory requirement for making telephone number
mandatory for having an email address and condemned the move as such
practice could expose privacy of an individual.
"This
is an attack on user's privacy. This should not happen. If they (Gmail
and Yahoo) are doing such a thing, then this must be recognised by
Indian government on how they are collecting phone numbers," ISPAI
President Rajesh Chharia said. Internet companies have been advocating
at global level that there should be no kind of restriction on use of
Internet and if there are any regulations on Internet, then the cost
associated with compliance of those regulations should be such that it
should not check proliferation of Internet usage. Though number of
telecom subscriber is over 90 crore in India, a survey conducted by
research firm Juxt in 2013 showed there were only about 55.48 crore
people in the country who actually owned a mobile device.
