MHA cautions employees against accessing social media on official devices, including mobile phones

July 13: In its first-ever social media and Internet policy for government employees, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has cautioned its employees against accessing social media on official devices, including mobile phones and computers, unless permitted. In addition, it has also directed officials not to carry out classified work on computers connected to the Internet and instead use standalone systems.

The 24-page MHA note stated, “All personnel, including employees, contractual staff, consultants, partners, third-party staff who manage, operate and support information systems, facilities, communication networks and information created, accessed, stored and processed by or on behalf of the government, unless authorized to do so, shall not disclose official information on social media or social networking portals or applications.”

The note further added that no classified information of government can be stored on private cloud services (Google drive, Dropbox, iCloud etc) and doing so may make one liable for penal action, in case of data leakage. It also states that classified data should be encrypted before copying into the removable storage media designated to store classified information.  Also, it further bans taking away a USB device out of offices unless authorized.

For e-mail communications of government employees, the home ministry note says: “Classified information should not be communicated via emails and official email accounts should not be accessed from public Wi-Fi connections.” The norms come as the ministry’s cyber and information security division that deals with cyber crime wants to prevent security breach and ensuring the sensitivity of data. It was stated that a large number of employees use smartphones and at times get exposed to malware-infected website unknowingly.