Border hostilities between India and Pakistan during Operation Sindoor prompted Centre to quietly secure its core administrative platform – eOffice – amid concerns of potential cyber threats targetting critical digital infrastructure, people familiar with the development told Moneycontrol.
According to sources, access to Office, the digital backbone of file processing and internal communication across central ministries, was significantly restricted during the peak of the standoff. Only users on government networks such as NICNET and WebVPN were allowed access, effectively blocking any external or public network entry points.
The National Informatics Centre Network or NICNET is a satellite-based network used by National Informatics Centre (NIC) to facilitate e-governance applications. WebVPN is a virtual private network service offered by NIC for government employees.
The eOffice platform, developed and maintained by the National Informatics Centre, is used across all central ministries and many state departments, and plays a critical role in digitising official correspondence, file noting, and government approvals.
The Centre issued strict instructions to officials so as to ensure that user credentials of email and VPN access were kept securely and were changed from time to time. The government also enforced a strict prohibition on uploading classified, secret, or top-secret files to the platform, citing fears of espionage or data leaks.
In addition to access restrictions, multiple layers of technical safeguards were activated, sources said.
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Daily malware scans were mandated on all client and server systems, administrative credentials were reset more frequently, and real-time monitoring was ramped up across all eOffice infrastructure through the National Informatics Centre’s Command & Control Centre, said people familiar with the matter.
Staging environments, which are test servers often left exposed for development purposes, were taken offline entirely during the period of heightened alert, one source added.
These measures followed alerts from cybersecurity agencies warning of an increase in phishing attempts targetting government networks during the period of elevated cross-border tensions.
Read More: Govt ramps up cyber vigilance on critical infrastructure after Operation Sindoor
While no major cyber incidents were reported during that period, officials said the pre-emptive posture was deemed necessary.
The precautionary measures taken in May mirror a broader shift in how the government treats its IT systems during national security events. “Cyber defence is now seen as a first line of defence, not just a backroom IT concern,” a cybersecurity expert advising the government said.
While India-Pakistan tensions have since de-escalated, many of the cybersecurity protocols introduced last month are expected to remain in place. Discussions are also underway about developing a hardened, standalone version of eOffice that could handle classified documentation in the future.
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