ITDA has recently purchased several anti-virus and cybersecurity-related solutions. Security Information Management, worth around Rs 2 crore, is also one of these.

The Information Technology Development Agency (ITDA), facing the brunt of cyber attacks, has been taking half-hearted steps to avoid such attacks. The situation is such that after purchasing software and security solutions worth crores of rupees, they have not been used.

ITDA has been battling cyber attacks for the past one and a half weeks. Till now, all the websites and mobile apps that were affected by this attack have not been fully operational. According to sources, ITDA had recently purchased several anti-virus and cybersecurity-related solutions.

Security Information Management, purchased at a cost of about two crores, is also included in this. The work of SIM is to manage the database, but its purchase has not been useful till now. Similarly, there are many other solutions that were purchased at the cost of crores but could not be used. Questions are being raised that if these were used in time, then perhaps we would not have to face such a big cyber attack.

The backup system of the data center located at ITDA has been in controversy for five years. ITDA had given the backup contract to an agency in 2019-20, but it could not secure the data here. As a result, the contract was given to ITI Limited Bangalore. The worrying thing is that even ITI, which took the contract for about three and a half crores, could not take a complete backup for disaster recovery. At the time of the cyber attack, the ITI team was trying to take a backup of CCTNS from the data center through risky methods like remote access.