New Delhi, July 15: Government employees will not be able to access social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp on their office computers, laptops or mobile devices after the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) rolled out a new policy. According to reports, the MHA has issued stringent guidelines for all government officials to take precautions against becoming victims to cybercrime and exposing government data to any kind of cyber attack. The recent move mainly aims to prevent the security breach, ensuring the sensitivity of data. WhatsApp Usage to be Time-Restricted by Modi Government? Here's a Fact Check.

In a bid to secure government offices and protect sensitive information from digital criminals, the ministry, in its circular, said that it is mandatory to seek pre-permission to use any kind of social media on office machines. According to a report by DNA. in a 24-page internal note prepared by Cyber Division, the ministry informed that each organisation should identify additional measures for information security in accordance with their use scenarios, the sensitivity of data, business continuity and other relevant factors. New WhatsApp Features in 2019: Top Features Coming To Platform This Year.

According to reports, the Home Ministry has asked officials to only use the government-provided email addresses for official communications. The report further quotes the ministry saying that the operating system, application and software patches including anti-virus software should be up to date.

A report by News 18 states that in the new policy, the government employees are not allowed to carry any USB device outside their offices without permission. The Ministry has said that no employee will store the secret documents in private cloud services such as Google Drive, DropBox, iCloud. Failing to abide by the law, the errant employees will face legal action for leaking data.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 15, 2019 12:03 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).