The minister of state for electronics and IT highlighted in Parliament that the government is committed to protecting the privacy and security of Indian citizens' data and the measures are part of the government's ongoing efforts to strengthen India's cybersecurity infrastructure
CoWIN Data Breach: The data leak - including names, Aadhaar national IDs, mobile numbers, voter IDs, passports and COVID vaccination status of millions of individuals - was one of the largest in India, and came on the heels of other breaches of CoWIN and Aadhaar data, and the records of a leading hospital in Delhi.
Cowin Data Breach: On June 12, reports had emerged that a bot on the messaging platform Telegram was allegedly returning personal data of Indian citizens who registered with the CoWIN portal for vaccination purposes.
As India positions itself as a staunch advocate of Digital Public Infrastructures at the international level, developments such as this data leak are a stark reminder of the gap between the rhetoric and reality associated with DPIs.
The agency is looking into any potential leaks that could have happened from the databases of these states. While Karnataka and Kerala are learnt to be among the 11 states, there is no information yet on the remaining states.