A series of workshops on Cyber Security of Digital Assets and Critical Information Infrastructure have been conducted by NIC District Units in Himachal Pradesh at District Headquarters. The basic objective of these workshops is to make Government Officials, at higher levels, aware about the potential threats in this era of Digitization and Internet.

The workshops were organized under the chairpersonship of respective Deputy Commissioners who delivered the keynote address and stressed upon ensuring complete cyber security in the office work as per guidelines issued by CERT-IN and NIC from time to time. The heads of various Departments at District level have attended these workshops along with their nodal IT officers.  A total of 402 Government officials have participated in these 10 workshops.

The DIOs and ADIOs are the key persons in these workshops and their presentations were oriented towards different type of threats prevailing these days and how officials can safeguard their organizations and computers from these threats. The emphasis was given on keeping strong passwords, installing latest patches for software, Anti-Virus installation on all the machines, getting software/mobile applications security audited every year and removing obsolete hardware/software items. The cyber threats like Malware, Phishing Attacks, Distributed Denial of Service Attack, Ransomware, etc. were covered too. The officials were made aware about importance of Cyber Security in mitigating the Cyber threats. They were also briefed about the Digital Personnel Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023 and the role of Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

The date and location wise details of workshops are given below:

1. Sh. Vijay Kumar, DIO Sirmaur at Nahan: 27-Jan-2024
2. Sh. Sanjay Kumar, Sr. Director (IT) and Sh. Mangal Singh, Joint Director (IT) at CGO Complex, Shimla: 1-Feb-2024
3. Sh. Sanjeev Kumar, DIO Solan and Sh. Swetansh Shatak, ADIO: 3-Feb-2024
4. Sh. Jagdeep Kumar, DIO Lahaul & Spiti: 7-Feb-2024
5. Sh. Rakesh Kumar, DIO Bilaspur: 8-Feb-2024
6. Sh. Vinod Kumar, DIO Hamirpur and Sh. Anurag Gupta, ADIO: 8-Feb-2024
7. Sh. Sanjeev Kumar, DIO Una and Sh. Bhupinder Singh, ADIO: 14-Feb-2024
8. Sh. Balwan Singh, DIO Kinnaur at Rekong Peo: 16-Feb-2024
9. Sh. Pankaj Gupta, DIO Shimla and Sh. Deepak Kumar, ADIO: 20-Feb-2024
10. Sh. Bhupinder Pathak, DIO Kangra at Dharamshala and Sh. Akshay Kumar, ADIO: 4-Mar-2024

Similar, workshops are planned in remaining 3 district headquarters followed by a State level workshop under the chairpersonship of Chief Secretary for Administrative Secretaries and Heads of Departments at Shimla. Sh. Sanjay Sharma, Senior Director (IT) and HoD Cyber Security Himachal Pradesh and Sh. Sarvjeet Kumar, Deputy Director (IT) NIC are coordinating these workshops from NIC HP State Centre.