After former Union home secretary GK Pillai’s porn remark, MHA says systems secure 

NEW DELHI: A day after former Union home secretary GK Pillai recalled how porn surfing by some subordinate ministry staff during his tenure used to compromise the computer networks of the Ministry of Home Affairs, senior officials said on Thursday that the ministry had strengthened its security in order to block access to pornographic content.

A senior official said that the ministry had put in place a robust security system to check external attempts to infiltrate its computer network. 

“Intrusion prevention system, intrusion detection system, antivirus and anti-malware have been put in place. It is a very robust system to ensure foolproof security in the MHA computer networks,” said the official, who did not wish to be named.

A network security policy, network security monitoring and firewall had also been put in place, the official added Another official said that as the firewall had been installed, no employee in the MHA could watch pornography on office computers.

The firewall against pornographic websites has been installed as such video clips may have attachedAddressing the maiden Finsec Conclave in Mumbai on Wednesday, Pillai had said, “When I was the Union home secretary almost eight-nine years ago, every 60 days we would find the entire computers compromised”.

Pillai, who chairs the non-profit Data Security Council of India, promoted by Nasscom, said senior ministry officials used to be busy with meetings till late in the evening, because of which the subordinate staff had to stay back in office for post-meeting work.

“So what will they (subordinates) do? They go and open the Internet and they are on porn sites and so on and so forth, and download all sorts of things that come with all the malware,” he said.

Just a week ago, Chinese characters appeared on the home page of the defence ministry’s website. The websites of the home ministry and labour ministry were also temporarily down.

Initially, the defence minister confirmed that the defence ministry’s website was hacked. However, later the minister and the National Informatics Centre, which maintains the ministry’s website, claimed that the websites were down because of a “technical issue.”