eGov-April-2010-[20-30]-Event Report-ScureIT 2010-Safety, Security and Disaster and Management.

event report: secureIT 2010

Safety, Security and Disaster Management Is ICT the Answer?

(L-R) General N C Vij, Vice Chairman National Disaster Management Authority; Dr M P Narayanan, President, Centre for Science, Development & Media Studies;Maj Gen (Dr) R Siva Kumar, Head (NRDMS) & CEO (NSDI), Dept of Science and Technology; Dr Ravi Gupta, Editor-in-Chief, egov magazine & Executive Director, Centre for Science, Development & Media Studies; Prof Amarjeet Kaur, Director, CDMS, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University Amarjeet Kaur

Introduction egov in association with the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and IT, Government of India, in partnership with NSDI and GGSIP University, organised a Convention on ICT in Public Safety, Security and Disaster Management on March 04, 2010 in New Delhi. The Convention aimed to identify and discuss emerging public security threats, highlight cutting edge technological resources, share expertise in conducting risk assessments, assist in the formulation of appropriate response

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strategies, and facilitate the development of inter-disciplinary partnerships to ensure homeland security. The one-day Convention involving experts, government and private organisations in security field discussed and deliberated on issues such as ICT in Policing and Police Modernisation, Integrated approach in security- Cutting across government agencies and departments, Intelligence gathering and sharing, IP based video surveillance and secure communication systems, Cyber security, Role of biometrics, Capacity building of security forces and Disaster management.

Inaugural Session: Vision and Roadmap The Convention began with the introductory note by Dr M P Narayanan, President, Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies. He remarked that the terror in India has penetrated deep into the society and even children are well aware of these horrific acts. The government has taken it seriously. He hailed the role of ICT in combating terrorism. Dr Narayanan remarked that the homeland security in India is a billion dollar industry demanding

active participation of private sector.

General N C Vij, Vice Chairman, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) described NDMA’s initiatives and informed that it has been focusing on

General N C Vij Vice Chairman National Disaster Management Authority

structural and systematic changes rather than linear and incremental movementswhich does not stay for long. The Planning Commission, the Finance Commission and the Government of India (GoI) as a whole, have agreed to support financially. The theme, essence and core of mainstreaming disaster management into development process have been accepted by the GoI as the basic theme.

He also informed that Disaster Management curriculum will be included in the syllabus of schools, higher and technical education institutions. The same will also be included in the Panchayati Raj Institutions, State Institute of Rural Development and National Institute of Rural Development and Urban Local Bodies (ULBs).

Amarjeet Kaur, Director, Centre for Disaster Management Studies (CDMS),

Amarjeet Kaur Director Centre for Disaster Management Studies Gurugobind Singh Indraprastha University

Gurugobind Singh Indraprastha University, stated that the pride of the nation lies in the security of forthcoming Common Wealth 2010 Games. She informed that the Geo Spatial Security Plan of Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, where the opening and closing ceremony of Common Wealth Games will be done, is in the process of final stage of finalisation and will be submitted to Delhi Police very soon. Similarly, GIS based fire management plan for Delhi and is also in the last state of completion.

She also apprised that CDMS has started working on GIS based security plan for Naxal affected area and is in constant touch with the Ministry of Home Affairs and para-military forces.

The university is preparing a brigade of disaster managers for the Government of India and the Delhi government.

Savitur Prasad, Secretary, Department of IT, Government of NCT of Delhi, apprised the participants that the Delhi government has come up with the Integrated Communication System for all government departments, by establishing

services, including ambulances. He envisioned that all the departments will have the same handsets.

He called forth the industry to partner with the government in this initiative.

Under TETRA project, the Delhi Government will not be investing anything at all. The entire service would be on rental model (per handset). However, Captive license would be owned by the Delhi Government. He informed that the service level agreements (SLA) are already in place and in case of small deficiency in the system, the service providers could be penalised.

Session: ICT in Policing, Intelligence, Prisons, Ports, Airport, Railways and Border Security Chair: Maj Gen (Dr) R Siva Kumar.

Major General Ramesh Chandra Padhi, MOGSGS, hailed the role of ICT and informed that ICT has brought the capabilities in depiction, integration, visualisation and analysis of geo spatial data. Improved bandwidth, high speed data processor and data storage capacity has enabled fusion of military and intelligence inputs so that a common operational picture is made available to all security managers, commanders and officers at different levels. He stressed that maps need to be properly georeferenced, because worldwide there are many reference framework that most

Savitur Prasad Secretary, Department of IT Government of NCT of Delhi

Terrestrial Trunked Radio Network Radio (TETRA) technology- which is one of the world’s most secured communication system in the world. It is an integrated communication solution, which would integrate 18 departments including Police, Health, Fire, Administration, and Municipal Corporations. TETRA would cover entire Delhi and would enable encrypted transmission of data and voice and supports duplex communication without call drops.

Savitur Prasad remarked that currently everyone is holding separate communication handsets like Delhi Police has a separate handset, the fire services have separate and so do the emergency

Major General Ramesh Chandra Padhi MOGSGS, Indian Army

people get confused. So there is a need of a common reference framework. It is with this concern that the National Map Policy has been designed on a global reference framework. He laid emphasis on high resolution satellite imagery data. He concluded by saying that the

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security forces must be able to exploit the technology ensuring the security and integrity of the data.

Joachim Murat, Director, Sagem Securite (SAFRAN Group), discussed Sagems’ role in biometrics the worldwide.

Biometrics comprises methods for uniquely

Loknath Behera IGP (O & C) National Investigation Agency Ministry of Home Affairs Government of India

Joachim Murat Director, Sagem Securite (SAFRAN Group)

recognising humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioural traits. Biometrics is the image processing of a body part. The image is processed and put in the database. He cautioned that mistakes in biometrics are bound to happen, because of difficulty in taking the picture and then the matching. For this technological tests have to be organised.

National security should be seen as a knowledge holistic system, which should notify/identify the population for both criminal and civil reasons. He remarked that India has taken the smartest step by opting for UID system for identification of its citizens. Technologically, it is a feasible project. Use of biometrics in smart cards can to some extent stop the forging of the documents. Biometrics also helps in fast border control, border crossing with reliability. Biometrics data is interplayable, therefore, it is easier to exchange data with the neigbouring countries. He concluded by saying that the only concern with biometrics, is information privacy.

Loknath Behera, IPS, IGP (O & C), National Investigation Agency, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India spoke on ICT in policing. He brought to notice that in earlier times matching the signature of the culprit took around one month, delaying the investigation process.

But now with the help of the technology, it is just a matter of few seconds. ICT plays major role on crime prevention and detection. With the use of CCTV it has

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become quite easy to deter and detect crimes, which has reduced the rate of the crimes. The establishment of a National Police Computer Network will help to hold the details of all the criminals and the offenders, he added. ICT in policing is used all over the world in maintaining law and order and investigating crime. ICT is used in different devices for accuracy and for better and faster communication. The major role of ICT in maintaining law and order can be seen in the application of Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) which is a digital trunked mobile radio standard for public safety. With the help of the technology, the analysis of the digital evidence has become easy. He urged the manufacturers to come up with such a technology which can be easily adopted by the police.

Naval Khosla Program Manager- Government, IBM

Naval Khosla, Program ManagerGovernment, IBM, talked about the various solutions which are being offered

by IBM for homeland security. He spoke about the various ICT based technologies of IBM already running in the country and the ones which can be adopted from

the other countries. At the moment, IBM is trying to address detection and introspection, deterrence and emerging response centre, which are all vital part of the homeland security. He pointed out that identity management systems, warehouse building, smarter surveillance and radio connect as pillars of homeland security. It is important to effectively leverage the information in the right and appropriate manner. IBM provides end to end smart public safety framework. All the solutions and services are standardised which is modular and on demand kind of a model, Khosla added.

KR Murali Mohan, Director, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, discussed the role of GeoICT, the areas of focus being sensor networks and web enablement,

K R Murali Mohan Director Department of Science and Technology, Government of India

3-D data acquisition technologies, UAV’s and air chips. He pointed that all the sensors are connected to the web and are meta data registered, which are readable/controlled remotely. The various web services and encodings are based on open standards. The sensor model language is used for describing sensor systems and processes which provides information for discovery of sensors and location of sensor observations. The description of the transducers and the real-time streaming of the data is done by Transducer Markup Language. With the help of the Sensor Alert Services (SAS) the publishing and subscription to the alerts can be done.

Anshul Gupta, Group General Manager, Railtel stressed upon the issue of Public Safety and Security in the Indian Railways, which is the largest carrier of passengers in the world, carrying

Anshul Gupta Group General Manager, Railtel

around 8 billion passengers in a year.

He highlighted the need and importance of train asset tracking and on board surveillance system. The use of GPS system is important for security in the railways as it helps in tracking each and every movement along with the sensors and the strategic traffic planners to plan the train movement. Anshul Gupta emphasised upon the importance of a centralised network operating center, which is connected with all the other networks. He informed that currently the Indian Railways is working on the safety and security of level crossing gates, assets, block sections, thefts of cables etc. Railtel is working towards integrated IP based safe and secured train management system, said Gupta.

Praveen Khandelwal, Deputy General Manager (IT), Airport Authority of India (AAI), informed that the main responsibility of AAI is to handle the safety and security of all the passengers. Though safety solutions are there but work needs to be done on the integration of new threats

Praveen Khandelwal Deputy General Manager Airport Authority of India

so that an adverse and a critical situation can be responded quickly. He brought to notice that AAI is coming up with Airport Operation Control Centre and is working

on integrating all basic security systems.

A common IP network is being proposed and all the infrastructures are being integrated, which is an integrated safety solution data flow. Khandelwal stressed upon the use of Video Surveillance IP Camera, which helps to access the videos at any time from any plane, and is easy to deploy with power over Ethernet. He concluded that at the airport everything needs to be integrated to ensure safety and security of the airport and the passengers.

Session: Disaster Management Preparedness and Response Chair: R C Sharma, Director, Delhi Fire Service Major General Girish Kumar, Director, Delhi State Spatial Data Infrastructure (DSSDI) discussed on how Delhi is gearing up in case of any disaster and how far the security, development and

Major General Girish Kumar Director Delhi State Spatial Data Infrastructure

planning has been done. He talked about the DSDDI project which is collaborative and comprises of creation of an urban information system, i.e., creation of a 3 dimensional spatial data, survey from aerial photographs, creation of digital elevation model of digital terrain model, ground validation and over ground utilities, 3D modelling of the city, texturing, visualisation, virtual walk through, mapping of all underground utilities and land information system. The project is suposed to be covered in four phases.

Rajiv Saxena, Deputy Director General, National Human Rights Commission, National Informatics Centre talked about the digitisation of the Tihar jail which is

Rajiv Saxena Deputy Director General National Human Rights Commission National Informatics Centre

one of the largest prison complex in the world comprising of 9 functional jails in the Tihar complex and a district jail at Rohini.

It was important to have the infrastructure first and then build the utilities around it.

A LAN has been created in the entire Tihar jail. It has 178 nodes layer, 3 switch network, 1 gbps bandwidth based switch to switch backbone, 5.4 km of optical fibre cable was laid. The software application has prison management system (PMS), which includes the personal information, the medical and the crime history of the convicts and the under trials. It helps in monitoring the physical location of the prisoner along with his movements. It also keeps a record of all the policemen who deal with the convicts. The visitor management system (VMS) includes the registration of the visits made by the relatives of the inmates. Talking about Video Conferencing, Saxena pointed out that it saves lot of time and also the security concern of the convicts is lessened.

K Srinivasan, DIG (Intelligence), Border Security Force (BSF) discussed the role of Border Security Force (BSF) which is envisaged as managing the security of

K Srinivasan DIG (Intelligence) Border Security Force

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borders and other matters connected therewith. He informed that BSF has two major roles in peacetime role to promote a sense of security amongst the people living in the border areas and to prevent trans-border crimes and unauthorised entry or exit from the territory of India.

Besides this, they also keep a check on anti-infiltration/counter insurgency operations, protection of VIPs and other tasks assigned from time to time by the Ministry of Home Affairs. The other major role of BSF is during the Wartime where they act as the first responder to engage the enemy and integrate with the army for operations.

including the environment from fire and other emergencies. The challenges faced in deploying the services are obstructions and encroachments, high rise buildings, chocked roads because of major traffic

Dr Gulshan Rai Director General, CERT-In Government of India

A K Sharma Chief Fire Officer, Delhi Fire Services

Dr Vasan Institute of Remote Sensing Anna University, Tamil Nadu

Dr Vasan, Institute of Remote Sensing, Anna University, Tamil Nadu, talked about his Project- Developing additional support system for cyclone disaster management for Nellore using GIS and Airborne Laser Topographic Mapping (ALTM) technology. He pointed out that Nellore is selected for the project as eastern coast of the country is bashed by frequent crossings of cyclone compared to the western coast. The overall objective of the project is: to demonstrate the ALTM technology and to generate the high level DCL elevation model and then use that for storm search modeling and to develop a decent support system for cyclone disaster management. The advantages of the ALTM technology are higher accuracy, faster acquisition and processing, less gestation time, weather and light independence and high data density, Dr Vasan informed.

AK Sharma, Chief Fire Officer, Delhi Fire Services spoke on the fire management system using the geospatial technology. The mission of fire services is to protect life and property

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on the road, movement of hazardous material on the road. All these make it difficult for the fire department to ensure the effective delivery of the services in the society. In light of these challenges, he pointed that the risk management and preparedness and mitigation have attained new importance. Effective response cannot be continually achieved without planning and preparedness. Fast access to critical information is essential, the best tools and techniques and the training methods must be utilised fully to meet the public expectations. He pointed out that GIS is an important tool to help the fire services optimise the delivery of fire services in the city. With the help of GIS, instant display of all the fire safety parameters of the concerned building can be displayed, and the shortest route of the scene of the incident could be chalked out. GPS can also help to get the real time information of the fire services.

Session: Security of IT Infrastructure Chair: S Ramakrishnan, Head-Delhi Chapter, Cyber Society of India and N Vijayaditya, Controller of Certifying Authorities, Department of IT, Government of India Dr Gulshan Rai, Director General, CERT-In, Government of India, opined that it is difficult to judge the security scenario of the country. The IT infrastructure is growing both horizontally and vertically; with many new devices coming up in the market, the system is becoming more

sophisticated and complex. Every day new products are launched in the market, which every organisation wants to install in their system. The life span of these products is very short because they are vulnerable right from the time they are launched in the market. He highlighted that previously the hackers exploited the vulnerability which were known, but now the manufactures or the suppliers are unaware of the vulnerable areas. Very few organisations in the country have attained the ISO standards in security.

It is an important issue, which needs to be addressed. It is important to upgrade the application depending upon the technology. The security testing part of the product is important. The organisations need to have crisis management plan which deals with various aspects. The government is in the process of coming out with security policy which will be a Public Private Partnership. He further pointed that mobile devices will also become exposed and vulnerable to the threats and it is important to focus on their security right from now.

Rajendra Mishra, Inspector General of Police, Madhya Pradesh Police, explained that cyber crime has nothing

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to do with the robust infrastructure that an organisation has built, neither is it confined to police; cyber crime cuts across nations, boundaries and is in the virtual space.

With the increase in the cyber crimes, the main problem with the citizens is the lack of awareness on reporting of the crime. And even if the crime is reported, the local police station might not have the expertise to deal with it. In this context, he informed that Bangalore is the 1st city to have its first cyber crime police station. Delhi, Mumbai and many other cities followed suite. The competence to investigate cyber crime is lacking.

In cyberspace the vulnerability and destruction potential is enormous. He emphasised on the need to work on cyberspace enforcement and security, so that a secure cyberspace is provided.

All the security issues pertaining to biometrics, smart cards, mobile devices have to be dealt in such a way that a proper solution comes out of it. There is a need for the policy to be implemented in this direction.

Major General SV Chinnawar, Additional Director General, Military Survey of India, stressed upon the need for effective communication of data, which has to be maintained at one Dr N Vijayaditya Controller of Certifying Authorities, Department of IT, Government of India

security is not static, but dynamic. While doing electronic transactions the integrity and the confidentiality of the data has to be maintained by cryptography. Digital signature is required not only to protect oneself but to maintain the integrity of the data. It is important to come up with new solutions which are hardware based and is independent of the mobile operator.

Private players are converting physical data into e-Data and storing in data centers. It is important and is needed to look for solutions for accessing these information. The worthiness of the security solution has to be looked into.

Dr Ramachandran National Technical Research Organisation

Dr Ramachandran, National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) talked about remote sensing for which the data is managed and distributed and considerable amount of analysis is done, which supports many intelligence organisations, done primarily from the space. He pointed out that in the present day scenario more and more people are moving towards service oriented architectures including the various intelligence organisations. According to him, the key element is to present the requisite data to the right people. NTRO has been able to achieve it by making the whole process automated. He stressed on the need of creating an organised geo database.

Dr N Vijayaditya, Controller of Certifying Authorities, Department of IT, Government of India, talked on the security of electronic transactions and its trustworthiness. According to him,

S Ramakrishnan Head-Delhi Chapter, Cyber Society of India

S Ramakrishnan, Head-Delhi Chapter, Cyber Society of India discussed about two schools of thought,s one which prefers the adoption of new technology and makes one vulnerable. The second school of thought favours the denial of the new technology because of the complexities they come along with. He pointed that ICT makes our infrastructure really powerful along with making it vulnerable . As the technology is advancing, the sophistication of the hackers tools have been increasing.

Major General SV Chinnawar Additional Director General Military Survey of India

place. Another important issue which has to be addressed is the vulnerability of data since it is available to a lot many people than before. It is important to keep on updating the advancements in the technology and the same is being done at the military survey. To get correct information, the data processing has to be done carefully. The challenge which one comes across for the generation of the data is the lack of tools. He opined that the different sets of data are required for disaster management and preparedness.

Ramandeep Singh Walia, HeadSystem Engineering Group, Check Point Software Technologies, said that is important to live with security but the management of the security is the need of

Ramandeep Singh Walia Head-System Engineering Group Check Point Software Technologies

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the hour, which Checkpoint has expertise in. In this regard, it is important to collaborate and to ensure the awareness of the risk attributes. Electronic systems are intelligent and it is important to make use of the technology in the right way.

He brought to notice that the source of revenues from cyber terrorism or cyber attacks have far exceeded the revenue generated due to drug trafficking.

Another major challenge is the attacks by the hostile countries, which cannot be stopped. For this, there is a need to have a system which makes the response time much faster to block these attacks. He recommended that the processes, the policies and the awareness programmes have to equally compliment the security controls.

as the use of IT in crime prevention, use of IT in Intelligence generation, gathering and distribution, IT in crowd management and disaster management.

Although, IT is important, he pointed out that IT security policy is missed out in large number of organisations, which is a serious lag. Quoting a CII and PwC Study of industries in India, he informed that 80% of the industries surveyed in the study lacked IT security policy, and more than 70% of these industries were affected by some kind of a IT threat. Also, many of these industries did not have data recovery or disaster recovery plans.

Talking about his own PSU, he apprised that ONGC finalised the IT policy only last year. He questioned that if such a large PSU could take so much time to

Valedictory Session T Ramasami, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, tried to explore the connecting link between public safety, security and disaster management. Though, apparently, there is no connect, but as per him, if we try to find out who’s security we are trying to secure, we would get the connect between all the three, which are the human beings.

Dr T Ramasami Secretary, Dept of Science & Technology Government of India

He recommended development of data processing system / image processing system, which uses the kind of technology which can be used by even a technology deficient person. He pointed out a valid point for further discussion, which is ensuring that the technology that people have is securely handled.

B C Nayak, Director General (Security), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Ltd., applaued the Convention for discussing very pertinent issues such

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B C Nayak Director General (Security) Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd.

formulate the IT Policy, what would be the state of affairs of IT Security in other industries? He concluded by saying that not only there is a need for formulation of IT Policy and its implementation, but also making people aware of the threats to IT Security.

Ashwini Kumar, Director, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), noted that while on the one hand, mankind has extremely

benefitted from information technology and communication revolution, on the other hand there are people, who are misusing this technology for ulterior motives. IT is not only being used to undertake conventional crimes, but also new set of crimes, which were never there earlier. These include cyber attacks and cyber crimes. Ashwini Kumar stated that cyber crimes fit perfectly into the definition of international crimes, since it does not recognise any political or geographical jurisdiction. Prevention, investigation and prosecution of cyber crimes have become the most formidable task before the law enforcement agencies all over the globe.

In view of the serious threats posed to the safety and security by cyber attacks, one thing that has emerged very clearly is that cyber crimes cannot be tackled without effective coordination and cooperation between law enforcement agencies, private sector, ISPs, R&D centres at national and international level.

Ashwini Kumar concluded by applauding the efforts of the Department of IT, Department of Science and technology, NSDI, NTRO, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University and the private players, especially the ISPs, in securing us from cyber attacks. He was sure that their cyber crime prevention efforts will go a long way in securing data. He thanked the egov magazine for organising this National Convention to deliberate on safety and security issues.

The Convention concluded with a Vote of Thanks from Maj Gen (Dr) R Siva Kumar, Dept of Science and Technology, GoI,

Maj Gen (Dr) R Siva Kumar Head (NRDMS) and CEO (NSDI) Dept of Science and Technology, GoI

Ashwini Kumar Director, Central Bureau of Investigation

who thanked the eminent panelists and the distinguished guests for their presence and making this Convention a success. \\ egov Team