Former Rajasthan cadre IAS officer Rohit Kumar Singh, who retired recently as union consumer affairs secretary, has some words of wisdom for cyber threat the world had faced Microsoft outage.
The world, dependent hugely on digital infrastructure, plunged in dark. One of the most chaotic and visible impact was seen at airports as the entire operations are completely relied on Microsoft. Thousands of passengers were stranded and the world came to standstill.
Singh, who has done Master's degree in computer engineering after graduating in electrical engineering from the prestigious Banaras Hindu University (BHU), advises organisations to shed over reliance on single service provider for critical services.
“Organisations should diversify their cloud service providers to mitigate the risk of a single point of failure,” he wrote in an opinion piece in Financial Express.
He advocated for enhanced cyber security and robust back up and recovery plans.
“Regular back up of critical data along with tested recovery procedures can ensure that data integrity is maintained and services can be restored swiftly in the event of an outage,” Singh advised.
Rohit Kumar Singh, who is a 1989 batch-IAS, has served in important departments – both at centre and in Rajasthan. He calls for organisations to adopt a culture of continuous monitoring and improvement.
“Implementing robust monitoring tools can provide real-time insight into system health and performance, enabling swift action when anomalies are detected,” he wrote.
Singh has served in National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) for quite some time. He understands the importance of public private partnership and has seen the positive outcome of it especially in road construction.
For reducing the risk of Microsoft like outages, Singh suggests for fostering public private partnerships in digital security space also.
“Government can work with technology companies too ok develop shared standards, best practices and coordinated response strategies. Public private partnerships can also facilitate the sharing of critical threat intelligence helping to prevent and mitigate the impact of cyber incidents,” he opined.
Prakash Bhandari is a veteran journalist with over 50 years of experience. He has worked with The Times of India for 30 years and contributed to leading publications as well as international news agency AFP.
