BENGALURU: Government department portals in the state have become safer and less prone to hackers by adopting and upgrading to the Content Management System - 4 (CMS v4.0).
Upgrading of over 1,200 existing government portals has been taken up by the Centre for e-Governance Department. The web portal wing of the Centre for e-Governance comes under the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR e-Governance).
The state has over 72 major departments in Karnataka, and each department has a separate web portal with many websites under it. At present, around 600 portals have been upgraded, while the remaining are in different stages of upgrading. Officials from the e-Governance department said it will take some time to cover all the 1,200 portals under the CMS v4.0 version, which is the latest.
They are ensuring a smooth migration from the existing version to the upgraded one, while also training the staff who are maintaining the websites and portals, sources said.
The new version has multiple layers of safety measures and features and is less prone to virus attacks, the sources said.
“Along with an OTP-verified system, we also have QR code verification, making it difficult for hackers to target our websites,’’ an official said.
There have been instances of government portals being hacked in the past. Earlier this year, the Kaveri 2.0 application, managed by the Karnataka Stamps and Registration Department, saw a cyber attack, impacting property registration, document services and citizen services like downloading of encumbrance certificates (ECs). Every year, an average of 50-60 state and Union government websites are hacked across the country.
‘We wanted to make the websites even more safe’
“In Karnataka, such instances are fewer. But we wanted to make the websites even more safe,” sources said. The new system has introduced many changes and security enhancements on these websites. “They have been made visually-impaired friendly.
The websites should not just feel attractive, but also be responsive and user-friendly, which is what we are ensuring,” the sources said. Pankit
Desai, Co-Founder and CEO at Sequretek and a cybersecurity expert, said CMS- 4 is a good start. “But it takes an enormous amount of time to implement. That is just one element.
Otherwise, it needs continuous upgradation and testing for safety. If the testing is inadequate, it’s as good as half done,’’ he said. Those who are implementing it should make it robust to make it difficult for hackers, he added.