Following fears of snooping by foreign agencies, the Government is soon going to introduce a new “email policy”, which will make it mandatory for officials posted at Indian missions abroad to take security measures while sending communication over the Internet.
During the Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha, Union Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal was asked whether the Centre would set up servers within the country to protect government data from being accessed by foreign spy agencies. Sibal said that this was a serious issue the government was grappling with. Even though two Indian companies have set up mail servers within the country it is inadequate.
“The problem is that they will protect e-mails only within India. For e-mails outside India, you will have to use foreign servers. So, the problem is that it does not resolve the issue,” he said.
Therefore, Sibal said that government “has decided that the Indian embassies abroad will use NIC servers installed in the embassies which are directly linked to a server in India”. “So, those will not be able to be accessed. Hence, the government information will be safe. And, I can promise that we will make sure that happens.” Sibal said that the soon-to-be-announced e-mail policy will make it mandatory for government officials posted abroad to “only use static IP addresses, Virtual Private Networks, one-time password for accessing Government of India e-mail services”.