Title: Security issues in government portals: an Indian scenario

Authors: Abhishek Narain Singh; Aman Kwatra; M.P. Gupta

Addresses: Institute of Management Technology Nagpur, Maharashtra, 441502, India ' Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, 11016, India ' Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, 11016, India

Abstract: While we witness an increasing number of government websites day-by-day, the user experience with the various government websites is not uniform. This emanates from different technology standards, design layouts, navigation architecture, functionality, etc. This is one major impediment in making government website usage by citizens pervasive. Again, websites, both government and otherwise are frequently subjected to hacking, privacy violations, and defacement. Thus, such kinds of cyber attacks compromise the information security and privacy of data/information available on web portals. The meaningfulness of web portals as a medium to reach-out to citizens is lost in such a case. As an exploratory study, this paper examines various information security challenges in Indian Government web portals, and the initiatives taken to combat these challenges by various Indian Government departments, agencies and organisations.

Keywords: government portals; government websites; information security; cyber attacks; Open Web Application Security Project; OWASP; e-government; electronic government; data privacy; web portals; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLEG.2014.068275

International Journal of Logistics Economics and Globalisation, 2014 Vol.6 No.2, pp.112 - 128

Received: 25 Mar 2014
Accepted: 20 Nov 2014
Published online: 08 Apr 2015 *

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