With the Navy inquiring into a breach of one of its high-security computers two weeks ago, the Defence Ministry has decided to revive a long-postponed exercise to secure all its computers with new generation upgraded encryption and security systems.Top South Block sources said the Defence Secretary Shekhar Dutt had ‘‘taken a very serious view’’ of the security lapse at the Navy Operations Room earlier this month and would ‘‘direct some MoD funds towards securing South Block computers better’’.Although it admitted that there had been a security breach in one of its computer systems, the Navy debunked reports that the information accessed was of an operationally sensitive nature.Dismissing reports that information may have been leaked to groups with Pakistani ties, the Navy said the lapse was minor and, if at all, may have been passed on to parties interested in selling equipment to the government.Naval HQ has ordered a board of inquiry to investigate the lapse, which it suspects may have allowed non-inflammatory data about the parameters of its acquisition procedure to reach commercially interested firms or persons.‘‘One of the information apparently accessed pertains to operational fleet plans or submarine movements,’’ the spokesperson said. Sources said the information accessed was being investigated, though the board of inquiry, headed by a Rear Admiral, is understood to have communicated to the top brass that the lapse would just need a more stringent ‘‘information movement monitoring system’’ and even better encryption systems. Most ‘‘low-security’’ computer terminals at South Block are stand-alone systems with access to the internet at the very most. However, specialised networked terminals like those in the Ops Rooms of the three Armed Forces are reinforced with encryption algorithms that generate access codes after a stipulated period. These codes are known only to authorised officers and shared on a sanctioned ‘‘need to know’’ basis up to a certain level—operational data is never allowed to remain on their hard drives.
