CBSE says cybersecurity teams strengthening OnMark portal amid concerns over evaluation system

New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) said on Sunday that it is monitoring and containing vulnerabilities in the OnMark portal used for exam services, and cybersecurity experts from government agencies and IITs are now fortifying the systems.

The statement comes amid growing scrutiny of the board’s newly implemented On-Screen Marking (OSM) system for Class 12 evaluations, which has come under criticism following reports of technical issues and concerns regarding the assessment process.

A large number of students have reportedly sought access to their evaluated answer sheets after noticing unexpected variations in their scores.

“We have been closely monitoring the vulnerabilities in the OnMark portal of our service provider that are being flagged in the public domain,” the CBSE said in a 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.

The CBSE also expressed gratitude to the “alert citizens and ethical hackers” for pointing out “weaknesses”, adding that the education board has gotten in touch with some of them directly.

“We request any others to reach out to our security teams at [email protected] for any further inputs,” the secondary education board added.

The controversy surrounding the OSM system intensified after reports emerged of technical glitches and evaluation-related concerns during the Class 12 assessment process. According to information that surfaced during internal reviews, the board introduced the digital evaluation system without conducting a nationwide pilot project before its implementation.

Subsequent investigations reportedly found that a significant number of answer books had to undergo additional processing after issues were detected during the digital evaluation process.

According to available information, more than 68,000 answer sheets were rescanned, while around 13,500 answer books required manual verification because of image-quality concerns and related technical issues.

Despite the criticism, CBSE has firmly rejected allegations suggesting that the system suffered a data breach or was compromised through hacking.

The board clarified that a web link highlighted by a cybersecurity researcher was associated with a testing environment containing sample information and was not linked to the live portal used for actual examination evaluation or student data.

According to CBSE, the flagged URL belonged to a test platform and did not provide access to real examination records or operational evaluation systems.

The board reiterated that no breach of the live evaluation infrastructure had taken place and that necessary measures were being implemented to further enhance security safeguards.

The development comes at a time when the board is facing increased attention from students, parents and educators regarding the functioning of the new digital evaluation mechanism.

CBSE officials said that efforts are underway to improve the system’s reliability, strengthen cybersecurity protections and address concerns raised during the evaluation process while ensuring the integrity of examination services.