Maharashtra Cyber, the nodal agency for cybersecurity and investigations for the state, has asked government employees to strictly use approved platforms such as official e-mails for official correspondence and other communications.
Why the measure?
In October 2023, police had arrested a man named Mohammed Ilyaz Yakub Momin for allegedly creating a fake email account in the name of Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ private secretary and sending fake transfer orders to six engineers. The orders were prepared on a fake letterhead of the Deputy CM with forged signatures.
The special inspector general of police, Maharashtra Cyber, has submitted a proposal to the government to take measures to prevent such cases in future. Accordingly, the government is considering the issue of bringing the said guideline to the direction of all ministerial administrative departments and offices.
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"In accordance with the above matter, as proposed by the Maharashtra Cyber office, guidelines regarding the mandatory use of government-approved platforms such as official e-mail and e-office for all ministerial administrative departments and their subordinate offices for government work have been issued," a police official said.
“Government departments... are required to use the domain name gov.in/nic.in authorised by the National Informatics Centre for correspondence and other communications. E-Office and similar established government platforms should be used for official communication. Any information related to government work received through email ID from Gmail, Yahoo!, etc, will not be considered official.”
"All government departments and offices under their authority should strictly implement these guideline so that incidents that had happened earlier in October last year can be avoided. The said guidelines should be brought by all the administrative departments to the notice of the offices under their authority and all the ministerial administrative departments should take care that it is being strictly implemented," said an official.
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