Contingency Plan in the Event of Defacement / Natural Calamity

Defacement Protection Policy :

• The Ministry of Defence / DIT&CS / EPPMS website is security audited for application vulnerabilities and performance.
• Any application-level modification on the Ministry of Defence / DIT&CS / EPPMS website implies re-audit of the website.
• All the servers’ configuration and logs are monitored timely.
• Only system administrator users are allowed to access the servers for performing administration and configuration tasks.
• All servers are in lock and net secured.
• Contents are updated through secured FTP using VPN.

Monitoring of Defacement of Ministry of Defence / DIT&CS / EPPMS Website

There are two ways of monitoring the defacement of the Ministry of Defence / DIT&CS / EPPMS web application:

• The Cyber Security Division continuously monitors by analyzing the log files. The Central Help Desk at NIC (HQ) Data Centre also monitors the websites at regular intervals for possible defacement or undesirable changes in the Ministry of Defence / DIT&CS / EPPMS web application.
• The Development Team also monitors the website regularly. In case of any eventuality, whoever notices it first shall inform the Technical Manager and Web Information Manager both by phone and email.

Actions to Be Taken After Defacement

As soon as the Technical Manager and/or Web Information Manager receive information regarding the defacement of the website, the following steps will be taken:

• Stoppage or partial stoppage of the website according to the degree of defacement.
• Analyzing log files, troubleshooting the source of defacement, and blocking of the service.
• Analyzing type of defacement and fixing it.
• In case of complete loss of data, restore the website data from backup or start the website from the DR site in case of long downtime.
• Provide log files to the Security Division for analysis.
• Fix all vulnerabilities based on security recommendations and re-audit the applications.
• Restore the affected or corrupted contents from backup and restore the site.

Contact Details in Case of Any Eventuality of Defacement

Name	Designation	Organization	E-mail Address	Telephone / Mobile No.	Office Address
Sh. Anshu Jain	Scientist-E	CDAC	Anshujain[at]cdac[dot]in	9990253653	CDAC Noida

Time for Restoration of the Ministry of Defence / DIT&CS / EPPMS Web Application Website After Defacement

The time taken for restoration of the Ministry of Defence / DIT&CS / EPPMS Web Application website depends on the degree of defacement and services affected by the defacement.

• Data Corruption:

  Regular backups of the website data are being taken in NIC Data Centre at NDC, Bhubaneshwar. These enable fast recovery and uninterrupted availability of information to the citizens in view of any data corruption.

• Hardware/Software Crash:

  Though such an occurrence is rare, in case the server on which the website is hosted crashes due to unforeseen reasons, the web hosting service provider NIC Data Centre has enough redundant infrastructure to restore the website at the earliest. Generally, the time required for starting a website from another server is about 24 hours.

Website Monitoring Plan

Persons Responsible

The following Quality Managers are responsible for the monitoring of the Ministry of Defence/ DIT&CS / EPPMS web application:

• Concerned Division of Ministry of Defence/ DIT&CS, New Delhi

Frequency of Monitoring

The Ministry of Defence/ DIT&CS / EPPMS website undergoes regular monitoring through manual methods as well as through web analyzer tools. This is password protected and accessed by the website Administrator. The monitored data is analyzed on a monthly basis by the NIC website administration team, and reports are compiled. The compiled report is made accessible to Quality Managers by NIC monthly and as and when required.

Monitored Parameters

Though reports can be obtained on virtually every aspect of the website, the Quality Manager is responsible for analyzing and generating the following reports:

• Visitor’s Dashboard: Overview of the visitors’ pattern to the portal.
• Hits by Hour of the Day: Shows the most and least active hours. For multi-day periods, the values are summed.
• Entry Pages: First pages viewed in all visits. Each visit has one entry page, which may or may not be the homepage.
• Browsers: Most common browsers used by visitors.
• Platforms: Operating systems mostly used to access the website.

The website is also monitored for quality issues like spelling errors and broken links. Spelling checks are done weekly, and broken links are monitored daily.

Utility of Monitored Parameters

• Visitor and Usage Pattern Reports help provide feedback for personalization features for the new website.
• Search Phrases Report identifies keywords used to search the website. Pages are then optimized for these keywords.
• Top and Entry Pages most viewed pages and entry pages are optimized based on search phrases.
• Browser and Platform Reports optimize the website for the most commonly used browsers and systems.
• Hits by Hour of the Day Report ensures servers work optimally during peak traffic times.
• Referring Sites Report Used for link exchange with sites sending maximum visitors.
• Spelling Errors rectified as soon as they are reported.
• Broken Links scanned and corrected at the earliest.