Iran transfers govt. websites from foreign-based hosting agencies

PanARMENIAN.Net - An Iranian official says the country has transferred the location of most of its government websites from foreign-based hosting agencies to new computer facilities inside the country to avert potential cyber attacks, Press TV reports.

Ali Hakim Javadi, Iran's deputy minister for communications and information technology, said Iran has moved more than 90 percent of its governmental internet websites from overseas hosting companies to new locations inside the country, adding that the move was “essential to protect governmental data on internet networks.”

Javadi also said that non-governmental sectors should transfer their website from abroad into the country to further improve the nation's information security.

Earlier, more than 30,000 Iranian websites of key organizations, namely ministries, had been hosted by foreign-based companies, mainly in North America, the data of which could have been exposed to danger at any moment, the official added.

In early October 2010, Iran announced it had detected and thwarted a cyber attack by the Stuxnet worm, which was reportedly created to infect Iranian industrial and nuclear computer systems.

Stuxnet, first identified by Iranian officials in June 2010, is a malware designed to infect computers using Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) - a control system favored by industries that manage water supplies, oil rigs, and power plants.