New Delhi: The government and Virtual Private Network (VPN) service providers are now at loggerheads over the cyber security needs of the country. The government has issued a new order prohibiting its employees from using third party VPNs.
According to a report, the government has banned its employees from using third-party VPN services like ExpressVPN, NordVPN and others. Read more: Apple iPhones costing more than Rs 4.7 lakh? New report suggests devices could be very expensive in the future
This comes after firms such as ExpressVPN, Surfshark and NordVPN indicated that they would be pulling their servers out of India as a result of the government’s new cybersecurity directives, effective from June 27. Read more: WhatsApp scam: This free beer message on Father’s Day 2022 could be deceiving you
The government recently convened VPN providers and other stakeholders in a meeting to review the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team’s guidelines (certificate-in).
In addition to preventing government personnel from using VPN services, the directive also advises them not to save any internal, restricted or confidential government data on non-government cloud services such as Google Drive or Dropbox.
The National Informatics Center (NIC), which is part of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, is said to have published recommendations (MeitY).
According to the NIC document, “these guidelines are designed to sensitize government personnel and contractual/outsourced resources and to create awareness about Do’s and Don’ts from cyber security point of view.”
According to the letter, employees are advised not to “root” or “jailbreak” their handsets. Employees have also been asked not to use CamScanner to scan official documents. CamScanner, along with other Chinese apps, was banned by the government in June 2020.
“The security posture of the government can be strengthened by following common cyber security principles in government offices across the country,” the directive continued.