A day after the servers of Power Department were hacked, the authorities in Jammu and Kashmir today directed the IT companies providing services to the government departments and the financial institutions to “be cautious and alert to thwart attempts of hacking, malware attacks.”
As the cyber attacks have increased in the wake of border skirmishes between India and China, the hacking of J&K’s Power Department’s servers has underlined the need to heighten the alertness.
A senior government official while commenting on the issue said: “The cyber attacks are complicated things to understand. Only IT experts can guide us. As the IT services to government departments and financial institutions are mostly being provided by third party companies in J&K, they have been asked to strengthen measures to thwart any attempts by cyber criminals.”
Speaking to Greater Kashmir, SP Cyber Cell, J&K Police Tahir Ashraf said: “We have been informing general masses about the dos and don’ts to prevent phishing scams and other online crimes. People must take precautions and same thing applies to the departments and other companies. “
With more people turning online for undertaking financial transactions in the Covid era, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In), part of the ministry of electronics information technology, had warned that millions of Indians could face cyber threats by fake emails, social media posts, or text messages, asking for free Covid-19 testing across India.
The country’s largest lender, the State Bank of India, recently issued a warning for its account holders to remain careful of any cyber attack.
The SBI tweeted, “Attention! It has come to our notice that a cyber attack is going to take place in major cities of India. Kindly refrain yourself from clicking on emails coming from ncov2019@gov.in with a subject line Free COVID-19 Testing.”
The Reserve Bank of India, too, issued an advisory on June 22 advising measures for safe digital transactions.
It is relevant to mention that few days back Indiabulls, an Indian financing giant faced a cyber attack which has kept may organizations on toes.
How to prevent cyber attack:
Make sure that you don’t open attachments in unsolicited emails even if it comes from people in your contact list and never click on a URL contained in an unsolicited email.
In case it seems to be a genuine URL, shut the email and prefer checking the organisation’s website through the browser and check if such information is given there.
Always remain cautious while opening e-mail attachments even if the attachment is expected and the sender appears to be known.
Another most important thing is to scan for and remove suspicious e-mail attachments; ensure the scanned attachment is its “true file type” (i.e. the extension matches the file header).
Also take care of the phishing domain, spelling errors in emails, websites and unfamiliar email senders.
Always exercise caution when you see e-mails, links that mentions special offers like Covid-19 testing, aid, winning prize, rewards, cashback offers.
Check the integrity of URLs before providing logging credentials or clicking a link.
Never submit any personal information to unknown and unfamiliar websites.
Make sure that you are using safe browsing tools, filtering tools in your anti-virus, firewall and filtering services.