Engineering students develop pathbreaking anti-data theft application for govt establishments

Engineering students of the country have successfully developed a total of 27 innovative computer applications which include one for Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to help prevent theft of sensitive data from its establishments.

The students have developed a pen drive powered by an anti-data theft application which can be used on appointed computers only. No other pen drive can be used in such computers to copy and transfer data to any other non-assigned computer.

All the 27 innovative technical solutions came during the first season of a non-stop 36 hours coding contest organised by the All India Council for Technical Institution (AICTE) last year. A total of 57 teams comprising over 9000 students had participated in the final round of the coding contest, titled 'Hackathon,' held at 23 centres across the country.

"All these 27 innovative technical solutions are ready. Various departments of the (Central) government will deploy these solutions this year," human resource development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar announced at a press conference here on Thursday.

The innovative solutions developed by the B Tech students will be deployed at various departments of the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Indian Council of Medical Research, Ministry of Steel, Ministry of Road Transport, Ministry of Development of North-East Region and the Centre's Department of Science and Technology, apart from the ISRO.

Apart from a secured pen drive, Hackathon-2017 finalists have developed an online intelligence gathering and analytics tool for the government, a real-time intelligence gathering and analytics platform for social media and online sources and an application for detection and localisation of objects using "iterative neural networks."

Other innovative computer applications to be deployed by the government this year includes one for the central government's department of Ayush to detect and identify medicinal plants and their geographical location, "fast and secure" online toll tax payment platform for Ministry of Transport.

One of the applicants, developed by the students, is a digital game for senior citizens to help them keep their memory intact, Javadekar told reporters.

Buoyed with the success of the first season of coding contest, the AICTE is set to hold another round of non-stop 36-hour contest on March 30 in which over 1200 teams of engineering students will showcase their innovative skills not only in the development of software but hardware of computer, Javadekar added.