Google Drive, DropBox BANNED for Government employees! Know why

As part of a new Government order, government employees are now restricted from using third-party non-government cloud services. This includes popular could storage services such as Google Drive and DropBox. Along with these cloud services, the government employees are also banned for using VPN services such as NordVPN, ExpressVPN and others. The order has been passed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and is circulated to all ministries, and departments. All government employees are required to comply with the new rules.

This move comes just weeks after the Indian government directed VPN service providers and data centre companies to storage user data for five years, and even share it with the government when required. First reported by Gadgets360, it is said that the government cites the increased number of cyberattacks and threats. Employees are asked to “not upload or save any internal, restricted, confidential government data or files on any non-government cloud service (ex: Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.)."

Google Drive, DropBox services banned for Govt. employees

As part of the directive, government employees are asked not to use any of these third-party cloud services. Note that the Indian government has its own cloud storage service called DigiLocker, which is free to use and is available for smartphone users to storage all their documents.

Along with the cloud services, the government employees are also asked to to not use VPN services, which includes NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Tor, and other proxies. The directive also asks employees to now use unauthorised remote administration tools such as TeamViewer, AnyDesk, and Ammyy Admin, among others. External email services are also banned from usage for official communication and conduct meetings and discussions on sensitive material. Even third-party video conferencing services are banned for internal meetings.

"All government employees, including temporary, contractual/ outsourced resources are required to strictly adhere to the guidelines mentioned in this document," the order said. "Any non-compliance may be acted upon by the respective CISOs/ department heads,” says the report.

Just before this happened, the CERT had issued a new directive for VPN service providers to store all the suer data and even share it with the authorities when required. However, several VPN service providers termed this as a breach of privacy and pulled out their servers from the Indian shores.