Ethical hackers to guard digital land record rooms

The land ministry says it would task ethical hackers for the security of its digitised land record room.

"The government has emphasised cyber security since the digitization of the land-related documents digital record storeroom," Land Minister Saifuzzaman Chowdhury told the press at his office Wednesday.

"The ministry will task ethical hackers if other hackers try to breach security," the minister said while responding to media queries during the inauguration of digital record rooms in 21 districts.

Saifuzzaman Chowdhury said the concerned public agencies and Access to Information (a2i) Programme team have already been looking after the cyber security issues.

"But if we face any cyber-attack, then we will dispatch ethical hackers to launch a counterattack. The government already has a list of such experts who volunteered to combat cyber-attacks for Bangladesh."

Hackers can be classified into different categories - white hat, black hat, and grey hat, based on their intent to hack a system. An ethical hacker is an individual who hacks into a computer network in order to test or evaluate its security, rather than with malicious or criminal intent.   

The land minister further said that the development of digital technology has made work much easier. At the same time, the concerns over cyber security are increasing by the day.

"The ministry is committed to ensure the security of important documents," said the minister, urging all concerned to cooperate in the preservation of documents in virtual record rooms.

Although the digitised record room system project was taken up earlier this year, the minister regretted being unable to bring all the districts under its purview  owing to the pandemic.

He said the ministry will be able to implement it in the next six-seven months if the situation improves. 

Mentioning that the country is undergoing land management reform, Saifuzzaman Chowdhury said that the ministry and other offices under it have made good progress.

"This ministry was once called the 'ministry of people's suffering". But things have changed since then."

While addressing the inauguration, land ministry Secretary Md Muksodur Rahman Patwary said digital record rooms are being set up in other districts of the country in phases. However, work in the three hill districts could not be started due to some legal complications.

He said, "Senior officials of the government are working on it. We are considering one-stop service in all districts. The ministry has already scanned and indexed more than three crores of khatians [records of land rights]."

The Ministry of Land won the Digital Bangladesh Award-2020 and UN Public Service Award-2020 for its initiative to digitise land management services. According to the ministry, people can apply for online khatians, certified copies of khatians, and certified copies of mouza maps through the digital record rooms, by visiting eporcha.gov.bd.