The Maharashtra Government is all set to empower its citizens digitally by expanding the government’s vision of making it the “country’s first digital state”.

Towards achieving this goal, the government has selected cyber security solutions provider – Fortinet - to provide WiFi internet access to the citizens of Mumbai.

The Mumbai WiFi project, according to Vijay Kumar Gautam, Principal Secretary, Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra aims to cover all the major areas in the city with public WiFi to make government services available online. “An ambitious project like this requires technology that can be scaled up and be flexible to enable more users, devices and applications over time,” he said

Mumbai incidentally is home to over 20.5 million people. And Fortinet has, according to a release deployed access points n over 500 locations across the city. These WiFi hotspots are expected to ensure that government services are available online to its citizens.

The WiFi network is also planned for smart parking and smart transportation in the near future, by providing real time update on the routes and available capacity of various modes of public transport.

“Securing public communications such as personal information, financial transactions and mobile device data sharing over WiFi involves lot more than managing network access control. As organisations change the way they deploy access networks, connect devices and the number and types of network-connected wireless devices and mobile applications, IT leaders must deal with the task of balancing the requirements of network security with flexibility to on-board the growing number and diversity of clients.”

“BYOD and IoT are creating new attack vectors that put critical assets within public or private networks at risk. Security cannot happen at the expense of high availability, speed and density of coverage. Consistent security policies must be in place to ensure secure access and this must extend to the very edge of the network,” says Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India and SAARC, Fortinet.

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