VARINDIA - E Magazine, June 2014

Panel Discussion

(L to R) : Mr. Aneesh Dhawan, Regional Sales Head, VMware, Mr. Rameesh Kailasam Sr. Director- APCO Worldwide, Mr. K Mohan Raja- GGM-Railtel Corporation of India, Mr. Ashish Kapahi- Regional Director-Distree , Dr. Harold D’Costa- Cyber Expert-Law enforcement agencies - Cyber Crime, Col. H.P.S. Bawa - CEO,Webel Technology LTD and Mr. Mukul Mathur, Director – Channels & Marketing, IBM India/South Asia

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he panel discussion on ‘Emerging Trends on Cyber Security and I Governance’ emphasized on the need for Cyber Security across businesses, enterprises and govt. where more and more adoption of technology is happening. Critical infrastructure is one area where focus is increasing, whether it is physical assets or digital assets and so is the risk of security rising with this focus. For some it also means critical data belonging to citizens and nations. The panelists gave their individual insights on each of these areas.

Mr. Mukul Mathur, Director – Channel & Marketing, IBM looks at security from an enterprise perspective. “It is not just a man saying that I have a good digestive system and so I am healthy. But rather security is about looking into all dimensions – basic level infrastructure, data security, applications and lastly people. Because even the weakest link can expose an enterprise or the govt., it is more than important to look into all these perspectives while considering cyber security.”

According to Col. H.P.S. Bawa, the two things he has found while procuring IT systems in the govt. is that it is not always that they get the best products which also start wearing after sometime. The second is whenever any IT infrastructure is introduced in the govt., the people using them are not trained well and the vulnerability of the system increases from that side.

Mr. Aneesh Dhawan, Regional Sales Head, VMware recalled that the basic definition of how security is deployed is changing. “When we look at cyber security, many would define it in their own terms but when we see how the information is getting dispersed and how it is getting consumed, we come to two basic points – one is data center and the access points from where we access these informations. The deployment of security is changing and it varies from organization to organization. For instance, we talk of cloud infrastructure, whether it is public, private or hybrid, but we don’t have physical boundaries that we can define to ensure complete security.”

Mr. Ashish Kapahi, Regional Director, Distree pointed out the core issue of Cyber Security, which is the infrastructure. “Unfortunately, in India we do not have any control over the core infrastructure or critical internet resources, which is the basis of cyber security. Whether it is the route servers or IP addressing, We have none of them under the control of govt. today. There are issues around which questions have been raised for the last many years. One such issue is that without the consent of the govt. a domain name can be created and can be brought down unilaterally by any private party or any governmental organization. So these details need to be checked."

Mr. K Mohan Raja, GGM, Railtel pointed out to the challenge of credibility that IT professionals face. “Do we have the matrix to measure what is security, what is the budget to prevent this and how effectively we can do it? With a plethora of products available, there are a good number of people who want to beat the system. The user behavior and expectations have changed so much that people will continue with social networking and online ticketing. Are we going to make incremental improvements so that these problems are contained?"

Dr. Harold D'Costa delved more into the law enforcement part to make his point. “As far as the technology is concerned, are the systems configured to the laws of the land? If technologies are replaced, is there any procedure through which if any frauds take place, we can gather evidence which is admissible in the court of law. Most of the time cyber crimes take place left and right, but the registration or converting it into an FIR is almost low but the conviction rate is absolutely bigger.”

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June 2014

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