Use pen drives, but with caution, says Election Commission of India to officials

HYDERABAD: The Election Commission of India (ECI) in a recent release flagged the vulnerability of pen drives that are used in the offices of Chief Election Officers across the country. Claiming they are akin to ‘mosquitoes’ it called for constant vigil. However, it also laid down that officials should use USB drives to store all sensitive materials, but with caution.

In its cyber bulletin released recently, the ECI told the CEOs, “USB drive dangers require constant vigilance in ECI and CEO Office. You might use the same USB drive for years without a hitch, then one day you could grab a file off of your friend’s computer and end up infecting your office network with something serious.” Despite all this, the ECI has asked all its officials to use USB drives and avoid storing sensitive materials on the computer hard disk. “All sensitive files should be stored in pen drive/ CD/ HDD with password protection. This will ensure that even if the file has been accessed by someone without authorisation, the contents are not readable.”

“While sharing your official/ personal pen drives/ external hard disk with others, please ensure that it doesn’t contain material which you don’t want them to see or copy. Mere deletion of the contents from the pen drive/ external hard disk is not sufficient as a number of software permit retrieval of deleted contents,” it said. Accordingly, it recommended the usage of Eraser Software for the safe deletion of its contents. “These applications provide basic functionalities free of cost.” The growing prowess and influence of social media on elections, data leaks from Aadhaar and various databases and other cybersecurity threats have rattled the ECI. Besides, the polling body organised at least eight cyber workshops where 1,521 officials participated.

It also brought in six mobile apps and four websites with security in mind. In its drive to weed out social media menace, 17 duplicate apps were taken down from Google Play Store and two “ghost” apps were removed by State CEO.