Govt bans WiFi in key offices, missions

Indian Government has banned the use of wireless fidelity (WiFi) internet or WiFi-enabled computers in sensitive ministries and has issued guidelines for departments and Indian missions abroad which use such service.

There are many serious vulnerabilities existing in WiFi and most of the WiFi networks are poorly secured in India. “In view of the vulnerabilities associated with the usage of WiFi and their exploitation by terrorists/criminals and hackers, departments and sensitive ministries are advised not to install or use any WiFi network in the offices,” says a circular from Ministry of Home Affairs.

The ministries will have to install best WiFi intrusion detection systems and carry out regular audit of their airspace to detect hot spots, rogue access points etc. The move follows terror emails sent by militants of the Indian Mujahideen by hacking open WiFi services to send emails around the time of blasts in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi.

The MHA said that a survey of WiFi networks in Delhi had shown that over 73% of the detected networks, including those in key central and government offices and prominent financial institutions, had no security or very weak security

Ministries and Indian missions which install WiFi networks will have to ensure that these are strong enough to protect CIA (confidentiality, integrity and availability) of the information data as well as implement secured authentication, authorization and encryption.

Officials traveling abroad have been told to avoid using open-access points available free at international airports. And, in case they do, they should enable the firewall in their computer, run random checks to see if anyone else was using their computer, encrypt wireless traffic using virtual private network (VPN) etc, the guidelines say.

Written by admin on August 5th, 2009 with no comments.
Read more articles on NSE.