Contingency Management Plan

1. Defacement Protection Policy
   The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is security audited for application vulnerabilities and performance.
   1. Any application-level modification on the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change implies re-audit of the website.
   2. All the servers’ configuration and logs are monitored timely.
   3. Only system administrator users are allowed to access the servers for doing administration and configuration tasks.
   4. All servers are in lock and net secured.
   5. Contents are updated through secured FTP using VPN.
   6. Monitoring of defacement of Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change

There are two ways of monitoring the defacement of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change website.

1. Cyber security division is continuously monitoring by analyzing the log files. The Central help desk at NIC (HQ) data Centre is also monitoring the websites at regular intervals for possible defacement or undesirable change in the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
2. The Development team also monitors the website regularly. In case of any eventuality, whoever notices it first shall inform the Technical Manager and Web Information Manager on Phone as well as through email.
3. Actions to be taken after defacement

As soon as the Technical Manager and/or Web Information Manager receive the information regarding the defacement of the website, the following steps will be taken:

Stoppage/partial stoppage of the website according to the degree of defacement.

• Analyzing log files and troubleshooting the source of defacement and blocking of the service.
• Analyzing type of defacement and fixing it.
• In case of complete loss of data, restoring the website data from backup or starting of website from DR site in case of long down time.
• Giving log files to the security division for analysis.
• Fixing of all vulnerabilities on the basis of security recommendations and re-auditing of applications.
• Restoring the affected /corrupted contents from the backup and restoring the site.
• Contact details in case of any eventuality of defacement

Time for Restoration of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change after defacement

The time taken for restoration of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change website depends on the degree of defacement and services affected by the defacement.

Data Corruption

Regular back-ups of the website data are being taken in NIC Data Centre. These enable a fast recovery and uninterrupted availability of the information to the citizens in view of any data corruption. Regular back-ups of the website data are being taken in NIC Data Centre. These enable a fast recovery and uninterrupted availability of the information to the citizens in view of any data corruption.

Hardware/Software Crash

Though such an occurrence is a rarity, still in case the server on which the website is being hosted crashes due to some unforeseen reason, the web hosting service provider - NIC Data Centre has enough redundant infrastructure available to restore the website at the earliest'. Generally, Time required for starting a website from another server will take about 24 hours.

​​​​​​​ Natural Disasters:

There could be circumstances whereby due to some natural calamity (due to reasons beyond the control of any person), the entire data center where the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change website is being hosted gets destroyed or ceases to exist. In such an eventuality, in-charge of NIC will instruct that the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change website to be started from the DR site.

Natural Disasters (DR): Storage Based Replication Takes Place at DR site.

Source: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (moef.gov.in)