221 govt websites defaced since 2014

As many as 221 government websites have been defaced since 2014, of which 42 incidents took place this year alone, government said on Thursday. "Currently about 8000 websites are hosted on NICNET. The total number of websites hosted on NICNET that have been defaced since 2014 is 221," Minister of State of Electronics and IT PP Chaudhary said in Rajya Sabha.

In 2014, 57 websites were defaced, which means hackers changed the content of the portals. Similarly, 41 were defaced in 2015, 81 in 2016, and 42 till date in 2017.

The minister said that National Informatics Centre (NIC), which provides IT and e-governance related services to government departments, protects the cyber resources from possible compromises through a layered security approach using secure and foolproof practices, procedures and technologies. As precautionary measures relevant advisories are circulated among the NICNET from time-to-time.

"Cyber Security is a continuous process and the protection elements are updated on a regular basis. A 24X7 security monitoring centre is in place at NIC, for detecting and responding to security incidents, including NIC-CERT," Chaudhary said.