MeitY asks Health Ministry to conduct internal audit for data protection

New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) has asked the health ministry to conduct an internal security audit to ensure data protection, after a suspected cyberattack at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) gave hackers access to personal information of people who had taken Covid vaccination.

In a letter written to the health ministry last week, MeitY has asked it to conduct security audits of all databases, people in the know told ET on the condition of anonymity.

MeitY has asked to initiate the exercise on "priority", one of the people said. The health ministry is contemplating engaging a third-party assessor for a comprehensive examination and assessment of its security system, the person said.


"While the investigation on the ICMR issue is still on, the security audit will help keep critical data safe, and will also detect loopholes, if any," he said.

Last month, personal details of more than 815 million Indians got leaked online, in possibly the biggest case of data leak in the country. The data included names, phone numbers, addresses, Aadhaar numbers and passport information.

The breach was first detected by a US cybersecurity firm. A threat actor with the alias 'pwn0001' claimed that it could sell records of 815 million Indians, sharing a sample which had 100,000 phone and Aadhaar numbers. The sample dataset included personal information of children as young as 10.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the union minister of state for electronics and information technology, had earlier said that the issue was being investigated and that a detailed report would be submitted.