Govt wants digital India, but what about digital security?

Last month, details like mobile numbers, addresses, bank account numbers and Aadhaar numbers of more than 100,000 beneficiaries of a welfare scheme were made public by a government department.

The government officials had revealed the information keeping in mind the Right to Information Act. However, because of citizen confidentiality, details like name, address and amount could have been sufficient.

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Understanding this gap between public and private information is a tough task, and even though the information has now been taken down, who knows what all information has reached the hands of harmful elements.

While on one hand the government is pushing for digitisation, many departments have forgotten to undertake measures for digital security. This is worrying even more when biometric details like finger prints and iris scans go public, because there is no limit on the misuse of these data.

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With the increasing number of digitally literate Indians using smartphones, adopting measures for digital security has become even more critical.

"When the number of people using technology was small, the service-spend on technology and security correspondingly was very little," Saket Modi, CEO of Lucideus, a digital security services provider firm, told ET.

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Everything changed after the demonetisation drive, which led to more and more people using digital payment interfaces. Banks thus increased their budgets-and cyber-security investments, but that doesn’t necessarily mean improvement in data security practices.

Attention to security has never been a priority for the government, but it has started to worry people only now, after they have been forced to go digital.

(Image source ThingLink)