Aadhaar Data Breach

The recent data breach in India have made billions of Indians vulnerable to privacy intrusion and identity theft following the data insecurity in the government’s biometric database known as Aadhaar. The database contains the Indian citizens’ personal data such as names, postal codes, email addresses, and phone numbers (Doshi). Former workers tasked with processing of the Aadhaar cards leaked the information to other members of the data breach scheme. As a result, the suspects demanded around $ 13 to reveal a person’s personal data in stored in the government database. Moreover, there were claims that they possessed Aadhaar card printing software.

The privacy breaches at Aadhar raised the concerns over the efforts taken by the Indian government to protect the citizens from hackers. Besides, there have been incidences in the past where the citizens’ data had been leaked from the government websites. Although the authority overseeing the program denied the claims of data breaches, the program was criticized for failure to assure the citizens of their data security and privacy.

What could have been done

Failure to track the logs into the government database led to unauthorized access to the citizens data. In order to offer real time data protection, the authority overseeing the program could have implemented security measures such as tracking the logins to the Aadhaar portal. Moreover, previous cases of misuse of data access were not address thereby creating for for further data breaches.

Authentication of users is a vital process in ensuring organizations’ data security. The fact that former workers could still access the portal was a clear indication that this step was not implemented. Therefore, the presence of authentication using one-time-passwords could have helped in preventing the data breach.

Work Cited

Doshi, v., “A Security Breach in India Has Left A Billion People At Risk Of Identity Theft”. The Washington Post. (January 4, 2018). www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/04/a-security-breach-in-india-has-left-a-billion-people-at-risk-of-identity-theft/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c4afc2298565