Months After Data Breach at ICAR, Committee to Review Situation Yet to Meet: Report
The Wire Staff
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New Delhi: A security breach at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) earlier this year has led to the loss of “crucial data”, the Indian Express has reported.
A six-member committee was set up to investigate the breach and recommend measures to prevent a similar incident in the future. However, the committee, whose report is due on July 31, is yet to meet.
The breach had affected ICAR’s website, its server in Delhi and the replication server in Hyderabad in April, the paper cited anonymous sources as saying.
The panel was supposed to look into the “non-functionality of the DC (Data Centre) and DRC (Disaster Recovery Centre)”, the report said.
“Data related to recruitment, from Technical Officers to Deputy Directors General (DDG) and job applications sought last year, is missing. The missing data also covers a large number of projects and related information submitted by scientists online and preserved in repositories. It includes email communications,” the paper cited sources as saying.
ICAR scientists who spoke to the paper said that it wasn’t just their email communication system that was down, but also crucial data regarding “recruitment, finances, scientists, research projects and administrative work from the server and replication server,” had vanished.
M.L. Jat, secretary, department of Agricultural Research and Education, and Director General of ICAR, told the Indian Express, “A few months back, there was some hacking of our website. Presently, everything is normal. The ministry has constituted a committee in a follow-up of our data policy. That is a continuous process.”
The breach affected data related to the Agricultural Scientists Recruitment Board (ASRB), Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute (IASRI) and National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM), the report said.
The issue of the breach was reportedly raised on July 7 at the Annual General Meeting of the ICAR Society, chaired by Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who then directed the formation of the six-member committee to be headed by Dr D.K. Yadava, DDG (Crop Sciences), ICAR.
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