Indian IT vendor sentenced to 28 weeks jail for Singapore court data breach

Janarthanan Tamil Kovan, 42, was sentenced to 28 weeks imprisonment after pleading guilty to endangering the safety of documents belonging to Singapore's State Courts and the Government of Singapore. The charges were brought under the Official Secrets Act, with a third charge taken into consideration during sentencing.

Kovan was employed as a service delivery manager with Lenovo PCCW Solutions and was deployed to the State Courts in June 2024 as an external IT vendor. In his role, he served as team leader of the courts' cloud system team, which manages critical systems and applications. He had been issued with a government-managed Lenovo ThinkPad laptop as part of his duties.

The breach occurred when Kovan granted remote access to the laptop to an acquaintance without authorisation. While no files were actually transferred during the unauthorised access session, the incident was detected and reported to authorities, triggering an investigation into the compromise of the State Courts' information security protocols.

The case highlights the ongoing risks organisations face when engaging external IT contractors with access to sensitive government systems. Singapore has been strengthening enforcement of data protection and information security violations in recent years, with increasing penalties for breaches involving official secrets.