Security certificate must for all websites

Following recurring incidents of government websites being hacked, a security certificate has been made compulsory for all the new websites being created and for strengthening the existing ones. Nearly 200 websites of the Kerala State Government were hacked several times.

The latest was reported from the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB), which was hacked from Ukraine. The Computer Emergency Response Team-Kerala (CERT-K) has been entrusted with the task of security audit of the government websites. In the background of e-district and m-governance programme being implemented in the state, several important services available to the citizens will be affected. CERT-K director Jayasankar Prasad said that all the websites created by the Kerala IT Mission insists on having security certificate.

Thirteen agencies have been selected to conduct the security check of websites and to issue certificates. However, a proposal for a large scale security check is yet to be formulated. “CERTK is regularly monitoring the websites and strengthening them with available resources,” he said. The security certificates given by the agencies are now preventing  hacking to a certain extend. Precaution can be taken when vulnerability is detected