Editorial Standards
These are the rules our editorial team and verified publishers follow when writing for Ministry of Cyber Affairs. They are not aspirational — they are the criteria we use when reviewing whether something is fit to publish.
Sourcing and attribution
Every factual claim in an article must be traceable to a primary source: an official police release, a court order, a regulator advisory, a vendor security disclosure, an on-record interview, or a named outlet that originally broke the story. Where the primary source is reachable online, we link to it directly within the article body.
Where a story is sourced from a confidential tip, we say so, and we hold the byline at the desk level so the source cannot be inferred from the writer's identity.
Verification
Before a draft is published we check:
- That every cited link resolves and supports the claim it is cited for
- That names, places, dates, monetary amounts, and case numbers match the primary source
- That technical terms (CVE IDs, malware family names, attack techniques) are used correctly
- That allegations against individuals or institutions are either court-established, publicly admitted, or attributed to a named investigating authority — not implied
Originality and aggregation
We publish two kinds of articles: original reporting where we add analysis, citizen-impact framing, or India-specific context to a story; and explicit summaries of advisories from primary sources (CERT-In bulletins, RBI circulars, court orders).
We do not paraphrase another outlet's reporting and present it as ours. When another outlet broke a story first, we cite them by name and link out.
Use of AI assistance
We use AI tools (currently Google Gemini) for narrow editorial assistance: drafting headlines, summarising long primary-source documents for our reviewers, and powering the on-site chatbot that answers reader questions from already-published articles.
No article is published as raw AI output. Every published article is written or substantively edited by a human contributor who is responsible for its factual accuracy. The on-site chatbot is grounded strictly in our published corpus and is not used to generate new claims.
Independence and conflicts of interest
Ministry of Cyber Affairs is self-funded by the operating team. We accept no advertising, sponsorship, donations, or government grants. We do not run sponsored content, affiliate links, or paid placements.
Contributors who have a personal, financial, or professional interest in the subject of an article must disclose it to the editorial desk before publishing. The desk decides whether the conflict requires recusal, a disclosure note in the article, or both.
Pseudonymous bylines
Bylines are at the desk level, not the individual level. We have explained the reasoning on our About page. The editorial standards above apply regardless of who holds the desk byline at the time of publication.
Updates versus corrections
Stories that develop over time may be updated with new facts as events unfold; these are not corrections. Corrections specifically refer to changes that fix an error in a previously published claim. Our policy on corrections, including how to report one and how we disclose them, lives on our corrections page.