Employees at the Centre have been instructed not to utilise third-party virtual private networks (VPNs) or anonymization services provided by VPN providers such as NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Tor.
The decision was made just days after NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Tor indicated that they would not comply with the Centre’s modified VPN requirements, causing their VPN services in India to be terminated.
The National Informatics Centre (NIC), which is led by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, said, “By following uniform cyber security guidelines in government offices across the country, the security posture of the government can be improved.”
“In order to sensitise government personnel and contractual/outsourced resources and develop awareness amongst them on what to do and what not to do from a cyber security standpoint, these recommendations have been compiled,” the NIC wrote in an internal paper.
The NIC has also advised government personnel not to root their phones or use any third-party mobile apps.
NIC ordered all government employees, including temporary and outsourced workers, to strictly follow the Centre’s order in the internal paper. In the event of non-compliance, the corresponding department heads will be sanctioned.
Many VPN Companies did not appreciate this decision and showed concern over the user’s privacy, the chance of mass surveillance & censorship. They said this decision can affect the entire IT infrastructure of the country & called this move a counterproductive.
The country’s VPN market is likely to reconfigure as a result of new VPN guidelines, as several players are terminating their VPN servers and departing India. NordVPN recently revealed its intention to decommission its physical servers in India by June 26. Major VPN companies, such as ExpressVPN and Surfshark, had previously shut down their physical VPN servers in the nation.
As per the Global VPN Usage Report 2020, India had the second-largest VPN market, with 45% of internet usage happening through VPN in 2020. While another report by Atlas VPN report states that VPN installs grew to a whopping 348.7 Mn in the first half of 2021, growing by 671% in 2020.
