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India-specific standards a must for smart grid

Smart grid is an electrical grid which uses ICT to gather information on power demands of an area and acts on the information to supply it. In our technology roundtable on ‘Smart Grid: The power of ICT in energy’ held last fortnight at our office, experts on the subject concluded that we need to understand the Indian requirements when it comes to smartness in the power sector. An em

Smart Cards: The ticket to smart governance

REFLECT: The Technology RoundTable is an initiative by Governance Now to bring on board stakeholders in e-governance to discuss on a theme. Every fortnight, we invite experts, practitioners and service providers to jam on a topic which impacts e-governance in the country. Thus on April 13, a roundtable was organised in our office on “Smart Cards: the ticket to Smart Governance”.

‘A cybercriminal always leaves a trail’

With the cloud becoming a major part of the computing world, it is important to focus on cloud forensics as a cyber criminal would most certainly leave a trail.  Traditionally forensics has been considered a post incident situation which helps to decode the source of crime. Most of the e-governance applications are online today whether on external or internal cloud. Becaus

‘A repository of all national IT assets should be built’

Given the security concerns of the country, Nasscom and DSCI appointed an advisory group to work out policies needed for e-security. The group studied various cybersecurity aspects of major countries such as United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia and many others. This research on various countries helped to establish a repository of best practices and recommendations for India.

‘Security is a journey, not destination’

Education and awareness for cybersecurity are very crucial. As part of capacity-building, a separate department has to be made which can publish all the information, concerns and policies related to cybersecurity. We also need to focus on social engineering as it is the biggest factor with regards to privacy or security of the data. The policies have to be implemented in actions and sho

‘Citizen Data if hacked may lead to physical harm’

You are looking at a time bomb which is ticking and ready to explode. There are several layers of security and a cyberattack can be on any layer. Ninety-eight percent of the experiment is made on level three securities. But hackers are no fools; they target other layers. They prefer to attack where it leads to monetary loss. A citizen data can be most attractive and vulnerable as far as

‘What will happen if road signal system were compromised?’

Microsoft releases security patches every second Tuesday of the month. They call it ‘patch Tuesday’. The next day is called ‘exploit Wednesday’ by the hacking world just because they wait for the patch to get released. They try to reverse-engineer that. They study and understand what the patch is going to do and they try to attack the vulnerable points. Obviously, the ne

‘People don’t report cybercrimes’

In September 2011, I started a survey to know as to how many people report a cybercrime. It is important that the public must report cybercrimes to the police as they are the ones who will solve the crimes. As per the shocking results, only 18 percent of the surveyed people believed in police’s capability. Most of the people from Southern India (where major cybercrime police stations are

‘Privacy laws will ensure India emerges as a destination for data export’

India is a federal structure and there is a clear distinction between the role of central and state governments. The central government is trying to bring all government services closer to the people but it becomes helpless when something falls in the realm of the state government. It can only advise the state government. The states have their own rules and procedures. This results in creation

Standards for smart cards

Smart cards have multiple advantages, not only for technology providers but also for various government departments. However, with the use of smart cards by government agencies, the problem of non-operability and vendor lock-in surfaced. The software and data on a chip introduced by one department was not read by the other department. We at the NIC worked out a technology pact wherein

Smart Card: Genesis of NPR

In the 1960s, a document such as a ration card was taken as an identity proof. Later, when the election commission started issuing the voter identity card, it became the identity document. After the Kargil war, the review committee on security prepared a report recommending that identity cards should be made mandatory. The rationale to make them compulsory was to check illegal immigrants. The g

Smart Card: Focus on authentication, integration

As far as smart cards are concerned we have a major role in integrating services. We have a list of empanelled vendors who are outsourced work like collecting personal data, biometrics and images and then printing smart cards. The costs are also reasonable. For 32 kb cards, the cost is close to Rs 23 while for 64 kb card it is Rs 33.80. With regards to authentication, my suggesti

Smart Card: Operating system for smart card

The smart card operating system for transport application (SCOSTA) has evolved over the years. Initially it started as an operating system for transport application, as the name suggests. But today it is part of every individual identity. Currently, it is just the identity that is going to be stored on the card. But the future requirements of storage on a SCOSTA compliant card ha

Smart card: Demand is rising

For the last three-four years, the demand for smart cards is rising across government departments. I suggest that there has to be a bigger department, which takes the responsibility of multiple concepts/technologies coming across in the area of smart cards. There has to be an authority which looks into standards and interoperability of various kinds of smart cards. Also, we have to prop

Cloud and its relevance

When we started work on the Goods and Services Tax (GST), we never thought of cloud. We just said we had to share. You have to start thinking and collaborating in terms of applications. Collaboration should happen at the level of governance. We said we will now share a common set of forms and procedures across states. Then we said ‘let us define the common form. Let states get tog

Positives of cloud outweigh negatives

We have come to the conclusion that the positives of cloud far outweigh negatives. The question is not whether we should adapt cloud or not, the discussion today is what kind of cloud we should adapt: government cloud or public cloud or private cloud. There are no straight answers. This decision will largely rest on application and service. And parameters like how critical is the application an

Huge benefits of shared use or reuse of an application

There are huge benefits of shared use or reuse of an application. We need to create a platform by sharing applications across states and departments to create a starting point for cloud to succeed. There are business benefits that we will get reusing an application, by making it available to millions others that don’t get the benefit of the service today. If you position in that context,

IOC’s experiment with cloud began with mail application

IOC’s experiment with cloud began with our mail application. The organisation sees inflow and outgoing of several thousands of mails every day. Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail and Rediff have their servers in remote places. So, we began by putting our mail application on cloud. The experiment was successful. We were satisfied and assured. IOC’s next tryst with cloud came in the form o

India should be the first country to adopt cloud

India should be the first country to adopt cloud (in delivery of citizen services).  Because as a country we have the most to gain from cloud, in terms of saving and optimising investments. Compared to other countries, we have the right kind of diversity, with so many states, to go for cloud. It is very appropriate that we go forward. Years ago, when I worked with IBM, everybody wan

Gujarat is already on G-Cloud

While delivering the valedictory address at the event, Ravi Saxena, additional chief secretary, department of science and technology, government of Gujarat, said the state has taken a lead in cloud computing in its own way. He said Gujarat is a step ahead of others not only in bringing all government departments on the state data centre but also leading to the virtualisation of its servers for

Visionary Talk: Amitabh Gupta, Pune Police Commissioner with Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now


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