Dehradun: A sudden major cyber attack in Uttarakhand on Thursday morning brought the entire IT system of the state to a standstill, which had a serious impact on government work. Due to this attack, the most important government websites and services of the state were completely shut down, including important platforms like CM Helpline, Land Registry, and e-Office. Work in government offices remained stalled throughout the day, affecting administrative work across the state including the Secretariat.
Major impact of cyber attack
The attack was so dangerous that the state’s most important State Data Center and Secure Internet Service UK Swan also came under its grip. One after the other, government websites went down, including websites providing more than 800 services like CM Helpline and Apunni Sarkar. The CM Helpline created to register public complaints also had to remain down throughout the day. Due to this cyber attack, more than 90 websites in the state were completely shut down, disrupting online access to government and public services.
The e-office platform, which was implemented by the state government to conduct administrative work in the secretariat and other government offices in a digital form, also shut down. All files in the secretariat were pending and no work could be done even in the districts where e-office was implemented.
Chaos in the IT department
As soon as the information about the cyber attack was received, Secretary IT Nitesh Jha and ITDA Director Nitika Khandelwal immediately reached the Information Technology Development Agency (ITDA) with their team. The team of experts was engaged throughout the day to get rid of the virus and restart the services, but the efforts were unsuccessful. Secretary IT ordered to shut down all services in view of the possibility of damage from the attack, so that the security of data and other important information could be ensured. By late evening, the team of experts was successful in temporarily starting UK Swan, but all the websites connected to the State Data Center remained closed till the time of writing the news.
Public services affected
This cyber attack had a direct impact on the general public, who were using the services of CM Helpline and Apunni Sarkar. The public kept clicking to use these services throughout the day, but due to all the websites being down, no service could be available. Due to the complete halt in government work, the work of the public in various districts of the state was also affected.
Investigation of the reasons for the attack
The reasons for the cyber attack are also being seriously investigated. Secretary IT Nitesh Jha said that the team of experts is making efforts to run the services affected by the attack smoothly again. UK Swan has been temporarily started, and efforts are on to restore the rest of the services soon. Also, the reasons for this cyber attack will also be thoroughly investigated, so that such incidents can be prevented in future.
Need for security measures
This cyber attack exposes the weaknesses of Uttarakhand’s IT infrastructure and indicates that the cyber security of the state needs to be strengthened further. Experts believe that if the cyber security of state websites and government services is not strengthened immediately, then even bigger attacks may have to be faced in the future.
This incident is a big warning for the state government that cyber security should be given priority and concrete steps should be taken as soon as possible, so that such incidents can be avoided and government services can be kept safe.
