When every sector in country is digitized, we don’t see the point why our Armed forces can’t be! Though the fear of hacking and confidentiality of sensitive databases had deterred the Army to re-consider it’s decision of maintaining a cloud storage till date. After a lot of mum on the matter, the Indian Army is set to go the e-way. Though many of the operations are already computerized, the cloud has been used only for less priority seeking functions like attendance, tasks, organizing events etc.
The modern e-times call for desperate e-measures, say the officials of the Indian Army. We may be looking at the whole system going paperless with highly encrypted cloud storage being set up. A 100% digital Indian Army, as many may call it will be functional very soon that will have the capacity of protecting a huge amount of database, like the Google database.
With the new cloud storage system, every order will assume a e-format, all the records will be stored on the cloud and hence will be accessible at the official’s fingertips from any location. The digitalization does not just mean digitalization of the system, it will also see the army personnel use such e-technology to go about every day’s functions. Sources say that with the high bandwidth connectivity, access and transfer of data will be fast and efficient.
The Army will also have data-radio that can transmit timely videos of the LoC and any anti-social activities can be prevented and also solved. “The Army has already initiated programmes to connect every soldier to its secluded central data bank through hard-wired links,” a source confirmed. Now that the e-platform is ready, the question is how useful will it prove to be for the existing soldiers. At present the Army uses the Wide Area Network for communications.
Considering that the Defense (more specifically Air Force) had called for a ban on Xiaomi phones in it’s circle, the fact remains that most of the hardware for any technology is made in China, how will the government ensure the data security and integrity.
Most of the tech products are made in China and the Chinese hardware companies have proven to be very notorious in the past. However the army officials have assured that the products that are used go through stringent security tests.
In the US, the army stores it’s database with the private players, mostly Google Servers. The information is only privy to the US Defense Department and the government spends $612 bn. But however in our case, the government has not specifically said no to private players but we can be pretty sure that the private players will have very little say in persuading the Army to store it’s data with them. The United States Army is the most digitalized and aces all the militaries in the world. The next is followed by Russia and China, while India stands at position no.4 which is a great news for all us Indians!
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[…] a lot of mum on the matter, the Indian Army has finally decided to go 100% digital for all of their work. Once digital, everything will be moved to a secure cloud which will be […]