No data breach in CoWIN: Govt

New Delhi: Amid reports of an alleged breach of data on the CoWIN platform, the Centre on Monday said these reports were “without any basis” and “mischievous in nature”, and that the matter has been reviewed by the country’s nodal cyber security agency CERT-In. The CoWIN portal is completely safe and has adequate safeguards for data privacy, the Union health ministry said in a statement, adding that an internal exercise has been initiated to review the existing security measures. The health ministry clarification came after reports earlier in the day suggested a CoWIN data breach, which reportedly allowed access to certain personal information that an individual gave on the government’s portal for Covid-19 vaccinations. It does not appear that the CoWIN app or database has been directly breached.” The health ministry said there are reports alleging the breach of data from the CoWIN portal, the repository of all data of beneficiaries who have been vaccinated against Covid-19. And, then there is API-based access -- the third party applications who have been provided authorised access of CoWIN APIs can access personal level data of vaccinated beneficiaries only through beneficiary OTP authentication.