A mock drill on IT black out and cyber-attack was conducted by the Nagaland State Disaster Management Authority (NSDMA) in collaboration with line Departments and Telecommunications Service Provider (TSP) at different locations in Kohima on 27th June 2023.

During the mock drill, Secretariat Conference Hall, Kohima was used as the Staging Area while the Directorate of IT&C, BSNL Office and SWAN Data Centre acted as the incident sites identified. The Command Control Centres were SEOC, NSDMA & Cyber Crime Branch, PHQ.

The synopsis of the cyber-attack was that, the hackers attacked the State IT Networks and gained access to several critical IT services and infrastructure of the Nagaland State Data Centre (NSDC) and launched a malware compromising several critical data and made demands. The Nagaland State Data Centre (NSDC) IRT of IT&C swung into action for restoration of affected websites/applications as per the SOP notified guidelines by Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

A debriefing meeting was also conducted at Secretariat Conference Hall where various issues and problems were highlighted and suggestions were shared by the Responsible Officers and other officials.

The mock drill, which is the first in the State, was conducted by the Nagaland State Disaster Management Authority in collaboration with the Department of Telecommunication, GoI, Dimapur, Nagaland; Department of IT & Communication; Nagaland Police Telecommunication Organization; Cyber Crime PHQ, Kohima; National Informatics Centre (NIC), Nagaland; NIELIT, Meriema; Bharat Sanchar Nigham Limited, Nagaland; Bharti Airtel; Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited; Vodafone Idea Limited and SymBios Creations Private Limited.

                                                                                                (Wepre Kronu, APRO)