Railways to identify officers with technical aptitude for training as online troubleshooters

The railways has begun identifying officers who will form the ministry's cyber security team as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's directive to every government department to pick personnel with technical aptitudes and train them in cyber security so that online breaches are contained.

The Railway Board, in a directive to all general managers, has said that the working of Indian Railways has been increasingly shifting to ICT platform.

Therefore, it has become necessary to secure the ICT infrastructure in order to safeguard critical information.

“It has been observed that, in recent times, an alarming increase has been seen in the number of breaches/attempted breaches to ICT infrastructure of Govt Organisations. The Government of India, at the highest level, is also seized of the need for adequately and appropriately securing the ICT infrastructure.

“It has, therefore, been decided that certain strength of officials from each Railway Unit with aptitude in ICT hardware, software, networking and compliances may be identified for forming the group for that Unit, to begin with. This group would work under the overall supervision of the nominated CISO (chief information security officer) of the Railway Unit,” the order stated.

The prime minister during a presentation on the National Cyber Security Strategy 2020 on September 1 this year had directed that "every ministry has some personnel with technical aptitudes. These are to be identified and trained in Cyber Security Courses within six months. These should then form the cyber security nucleus of that Ministry.”

In recent times, the railways has had to deal with a slew of cases in which illegal applications were used to book tickets, bypassing the railway firewall. While many such gangs have been busted by the RPF, newer technology automatically replace those that have been busted.

Recently, a meeting was convened by the Secretary (Security) in the Cabinet Secretariat to firm up the road-map for implementation of the prime minister's directive, the order from the Railway Board stated.

The minutes of the meeting on the National Cyber Security Strategy 2020 stated that these officials will be trained in both practical and theoretical aspects of cyber security through a course prepared by Miety of around six to eight hours, For advanced training, officers who are technically qualified or with requisite aptitude in cyber security or information technology will be identified.

The training, according to the note, should enable officers to “troubleshoot”.

The Railway Board has also allotted nominations for each railway unit. While the zonal railways have been assigned eight such officers each for generic training and four for the advanced course, rail PSUs have four each nominated for its regular training courses and two for advanced.

The railways' IT arm CRIS and the Railway Board has 20 nominated spots for generic training and ten for the advanced classes each.

Each railway unit has been asked to identify officers for these courses.