July 3, 2008: India's DIT (Department of Information Technology), an agency charged with protecting government networks from Internet hackers, is working on new defenses. DIT wants permission to monitor all email arriving in India from foreign nations. DIT also wants to install monitoring software on all its networks, the better to detect attacks, either in progress, or successful and operating on the inside. In addition, new firewalls and security software will be installed, as well as systems that will keep government systems patched with the latest security updates.

India, like most major nations, has found itself under attack from Chinese hackers. The data thefts include military and government secrets. Although China denies any official involvement, India sees it as a matter of national pride to stop this plunder. Moreover, the Indians see themselves as more advanced in computer technology, at least in software, than the Chinese. But on the Internet, India has less than a third as many Internet users as China, and much less Internet infrastructure. So the pressure is really on DIT to show what India can do. Failure to keep the Chinese out in the future will be a major problem for the government, and not just in terms of data lost of foreign hackers.