Nagaland conducts mock drill on IT black out and cyber attack

Our Correspondent
Kohima | June 27

A mock drill on IT black out and cyber-attack was conducted in the state capital Kohima on June 27.

During the mock drill, Nagaland Secretariat Conference Hall, Kohima was used as the Staging Area while the Directorate of IT&C, BSNL Office and SWAN Data Centre acted as the incident sites identified. The Command Control Centres were SEOC, NSDMA and Cyber Crime Branch, PHQ.

The synopsis of the cyber-attack was that, the hackers attack the State IT Networks through an open port of the website of the Nagaland State Portal and gain access to several critical IT services and infrastructure of the Nagaland State Data Centre (NSDC) and launched a malware compromising several critical data and made demands. 

The Nagaland State Data Centre (NSDC) IRT of IT&C swung into action for restoration of affected websites/applications as per the SOP notified guidelines by Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

A debriefing meeting took place at Nagaland Civil Secretariat Conference Hall where various issues and problems were highlighted and suggestions were shared by the Responsible Officers and other officials.

Addressing debriefing, Z Nyusietho Nyuthe, Advisor NSDMA and New & Renewable Energy Nagaland called for proper coordination amongst the line departments, agencies and stakeholders to avert any disaster strike. He informed that the mock drill on IT Black out conducted today by Nagaland State Disaster Management Authority is perhaps the first of its kind in the country.

Johnny Ruangmei, Joont CEO, NSDMA said that if needed, it would recommend for formulation of Cyber Crime Policy for Nagaland State. Lhouchalie Viya, Commissioner and Secretary for NSDMA proposed vote of thanks.

The Mock Drill was conducted by NSDMA in collaboration with the Department of Telecommunication, GoI, Dimapur, Nagaland; Department of IT & Communication; Nagaland Police Telecommunication Organization; Cyber Crime PHQ, Kohima; National Informatics Centre (NIC), Nagaland; NIELIT, Meriema; Bharat Sanchar Nigham Limited, Nagaland; Bharti Airtel; Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited; Vodafone Idea Limited and SymBios Creations Private Limited.