Govt issues guidelines to check information leak

 New Delhi, July 5 The central government has issued guidelines to its departments to making screening of outsourced employees mandatory and avoiding classified work on computers with net connection to plug information leak.

The move appears to have been fallout of the corporate espionage case, which saw classified information being leaked from ministries, including the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, to corporate executives who later passed it on to firms for a sum.

In its guidelines issued last week, the Ministry of Home Affairs has asked departments to earmark computers to store and use for working on classified information and has forbidden the use of external memory devices and USBs to computers containing such classified information and misusing the photocopiers in departments.

The MHA came out with the guidelines against the backdrop of the leak of classified information from some ministries including the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

“The ministries and departments will ensure that confidential work is not done on computers connected to the Internet and it must to ensured that external memory device cannot be connected to the USB drives on these computers,” the guidelines said. Guidelines were sent to Ministries on June 30.

The HRD Ministry and several others that have a sizeable staff employed through outsourcing have circulated the guidelines to bureau heads and asked them to screen their staff.

The guidelines mandate that officials of sections having photocopiers must get their machines locked with codes.

“Counting devices in photocopying machines and other office equipment should be made good use of so that unauthorised copying is not done. CCTV cameras can also be deployed judiciously,” the document said. —  PTI