NEW DELHI: The Army has developed an in-house WhatsApp-like messaging application called ‘Secure Application for Internet (SAI)’ for its personnel to prevent “leaking” of any classified information to inimical intelligence agencies.

“SAI is a simple and secure messaging application, which supports end-to-end secure voice, text and video calling services for Android platforms over the internet. It will be utilised pan-Army to facilitate secure messaging within the service,” said an officer on Thursday.

SAI was first developed by Colonel Sai Shankar, the commanding officer of a signals unit in Rajasthan, and then upgraded to military-grade standards. Defence minister Rajnath has also complimented Col Shankar for his “skill and ingenuity” in developing the application.

“SAI is similar to commercially available messaging applications like WhatsApp, Telegram, SAMVAD and GIMS and utilises end-to-end encryption messaging protocol. SAI scores on security features with local in-house servers and coding which can be tweaked as per requirements,” said the officer.

The application has been vetted by the empanelled auditor of CERT-in (the government’s Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) as well as the Army Cyber Group. “The process for filing an Intellectual Property Right application, hosting the infrastructure on the National Informatics Centre and adapting it for iOS platforms is currently in progress,” he added.

With Chinese and Pakistani online espionage agents constantly on the hunt to surreptitiously obtain classified information and data, the Army last year had directed its personnel to avoid the use of WhatsApp for official work. It had also asked officers holding “sensitive appointments” to delete their Facebook accounts.

There have been several cases where Pakistani women spies have virtually “honey-trapped” Indian military personnel through social networking sites into divulging classified information over the last few years. In 2018, even a Group Captain posted at the IAF headquarters in New Delhi had fallen prey to it.