The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has dropped Coempt Edu Teck’s OnMark platform for revaluation of Class 12 answer scripts over security concerns, with student and exam data being migrated to infrastructure under the board’s direct control, officials said on Friday.
The re-evaluation process – under which subject experts will scrutinize answers challenged by students – will be conducted entirely through CBSE’s own portal and is expected to begin next week. CBSE used Coempt’s OnMark platform to digitally assess nearly 10 million Class 12 answer scripts before announcing results on May 13 – and deployed a new system that has since emerged to have been hastily implemented that students say affected the results.
Also Read: Coempt gave expired CBSE e-certificates, linked to another client
“It has been confirmed that the re-evaluation of answer copies will be done on the CBSE website. Security issues on the OnMark portal are the reason behind this. We have realized that it is better and safer to do it on the CBSE portal so that we have complete control,” a senior IIT Kanpur official told HT, requesting anonymity. IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras CBSE are helping to manage the issue.
The switch falls short of a complete break from Coempt. The official said the company’s code, after what he described as significant security upgrades and testing, is being used in CBSE’s own infrastructure – meaning the board is running a patched version of the same code base on servers it now directly controls.
Also Read: Exclusive: How CBSE whistleblower Sarthak Siddhant got into computers and hacking
Coempt Edu Teck did not respond to HT’s request for comment.
When specifically asked about the security concerns that prompted the platform switch, CBSE neither confirmed nor denied the reason. She said, “The evaluation process holds the highest standards of integrity, confidentiality, and sanctity. The procedures and mechanisms established by the Council are designed solely to protect the interests of students and ensure a fair, transparent, and accurate evaluation process.”
The IIT team overseeing the technical remediation said it had not yet formally questioned Coempt about the vulnerabilities. “We did not ask Quimpet about the vulnerabilities – they will do their own investigations and we will do ours,” the official said. This person added that the team’s report on the vulnerabilities in the CBSE portal and OnMark platform has not been finalized yet.
Read also: Exclusively | CBSE whistleblower’s letter to CJP’s Abhijit Debke: ‘Online activism is good, but…’
Students who applied for and received scanned copies of their answer scripts between May 19 and 25 can file objections to the questions through the CBSE post-results portal until June 7. As of 4 June, a total of 70,433 successful applications had been received – 7,314 for mark verification and 63,119 for re-evaluation.
CBSE on Friday also said that it has lodged a formal complaint with the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations Unit of Delhi Police in connection with cyber attacks on its post-results services portal. A Delhi Police spokesperson confirmed: “On the basis of a complaint lodged by the CBSE regarding a series of coordinated cyber attacks on its portal, a case of offense under Section 66 read with Section 43 (f) of the Information Technology Act has been registered and investigation has been initiated.”
The four-member IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur expert team — which includes specialists in computer systems, operations and cyber security — was deputed after Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan directed the institutes to help CBSE on May 24.
