Avoid Blackberry, PMO told

The agencies have also cautioned against the practice of connecting official computers and laptops with unsecured internet connections by some bureaucrats, thus compromising security.

With the hackers, mainly from China, very active and having penetrated deep into the cyber space, the security agencies had asked all ministries especially the Defence, External, Home and the PMO to separate their official computers with those used for internet connection.
The recommendations of the central security agencies seem to have gone unheeded. An official maintained that their suggestion was only recommendatory in nature. The National Technical and Research Organisation also circulated the “dos and don’ts” to key ministries recently after attempts from hackers were noticed.

A PMO official said there were routine attempts to hack various systems. The PMO has its own system in place to protect against such attempts, the official said, adding, there has been no security breach.

Intense negotiations were held prior to starting Blackberry services in India and finally,  the Department of Telecom in 2008 decided to side-step the opposition of intelligence agencies and permit the services.