After receiving much criticism for the leak of question papers early this year, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) now aims to digitally encrypt question papers for the Class X and Class XII examinations. For this purpose, it has tied up with Microsoft India to help it encrypt the question papers. The technology solution would give the Controller of Examination full access to the whole process.
When a CBSE administrator initiates the process of distributing the exam papers, it would generate e-mails to the relevant people. The mails would contain a link to One Drive, from where an exam paper specific to the exam centre can be downloaded.
The solution leverages features in Office365 to encrypt and watermark the papers. The watermark would have the individual centre’s code imprinted on it, which would allow for localisation and traceability in the event of a paper leak.
“The overall process was automated to be highly secure with encryption, two-factor authentication and access to download the exam papers at the examination centre only 30 minutes prior to start time,” said Anil Bhansali, Corporate Vice-President (Cloud and Enterprise) and Managing Director of Microsoft India (R&D).
The CBSE conducted a pilot in the current Class X compartmental examinations in about 500 examination centres. As many as 4,000 students across the country took the supplementary examinations.
