Weeks after popular VPN services, including ExpressVPN, NordVPN, and Surfshark VPN, announced their plans to exit India operations due to the Indian government’s new VPN policy, new reports suggest that India has banned third-party VPN and cloud services for government employees.
As The Economic Times reports, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has issued guidelines to improve the “security posture” of the government. The new guidelines, titled “Cyber Security Guidelines for Government Employees”, prohibit government employees from using both VPN services and non-government cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox.
Apart from these, the guidelines reportedly also have general security best practices like using complex passwords and updating passwords once every 45 days. If you’re out of the loop, this is the latest development after India revealed its new VPN policy that comes into effect on June 28. You can catch up on what’s happening from our explainer on India’s new VPN policy.
