New government email security policy to be announced shortly: Deora

Seeking to ensure cyber-security and keeping government documents away from hackers, the government is working on an email security policy.

The policy will be announced shortly, Minister of State for Communications and IT Milind Deora said on Monday.

All public sector employees in the country would be brought on the government domain of National Informatics Centre (NIC) as part of the policy, he told a press meet in Thiruvananthapuram.

"Cyber-crimes are linked not just to any particular institution, state or nation. We have to tackle it with institutional capacities and with the co-operation of local police and international agencies," Deora said.

"As part of the National Cyber Security Policy, we are trying to create a new email policy for government employees. It will make them move away from foreign email services like gmail and bring onto nic.in, the government's email domain managed by NIC," he said.

Since the country had its own 'cloud', there was no reason for people to depend on foreign services, he said.

Deora, who had a discussion with the officials of BSNL, Postal and C-Dac in Thiruvananthapuram, said the ministry was planning to allot three new post offices and a training centre for post office staff in the city.

He said he would consult with the finance ministry whether the IT industry in the state could provide any additional incentives and tax reduction.

If the state government was ready to provide land free of cost for IT projects, the centre had no problem in supporting them as it would bring more business in the region, he said.

Expanding IT business to tier-2 and tier-3 cities was good for the overall development of the sector, he added.