The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Saturday aid it has contained the vulnerabilities detected in the On-Screen Marking system on the OnMark portal of its service provider. The Board is working with cybersecurity experts from government agencies and IITs to secure the platform and eliminate any remaining exploitable weaknesses.
“We have been closely monitoring the vulnerabilities in the OnMark portal of our service provider that are being flagged in the public domain,” it said in an official statement.
“An expert team of cybersecurity professionals has been deployed over the last few days from across various arms of the government as well as the IITs to fortify these systems, including taking them over to a more secure set up. The identified vulnerabilities have been contained, and other exploitable weaknesses are being ruled out,” it added.
This comes two days after Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan acknowledged “some discrepancies” in CBSE’s new On Screen Marking (OSM) system for Class 12 board exam evaluations and affirmed that all student concerns would be addressed.
After a review meeting with CBSE and IIT officials, he said the issues, including technical and payment gateway glitches on the verification portal, would be rectified and strict action taken if anyone was found responsible.
Pradhan noted that this is the first time CBSE has implemented this system in the country. “Certain discrepancies have come to our notice, and I take responsibility for them. These issues will be rectified, and appropriate solutions will be worked out. All of us are engaged in this task. We will not leave a single student’s unanswered query or concern unresolved,” Pradhan told reporters after holding a high-level review meeting with officials from CBSE, education ministry and directors of IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras.
Earlier, the education board had rejected claims that its actual evaluation platform had been compromised. The board said the URL highlighted in social media posts was only a testing portal containing sample data and not the system used for live evaluation work.
