Anand
After winning the Blackberry case (as the company has setup its servers in India), the Indian government has now gone a step further by setting up an internet scanning agency which will seek to monitor all web traffic passing through internet service providers in the country.
The scanning agency to be called National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC), will issue ‘actionable alerts’ to government departments in cases of perceived security threats.
The government is planning to invest about INR 800 crore in the setup and wants to ensure that all tweets, Facebook status updates, emails are scanned by the agency.
A small view on the Blackberry case
INDIA–Experts say the recent controversy involving India and Canada-based Research In Motion’s (RIM) Blackberry services signals the need to evolve an international agreement on data security.
Citing security concerns over the use of BlackBerry by militants, as e-mail messages sent using the mobile device cannot be traced or intercepted, the Indian government has been putting pressure on RIM to provide security agencies with a way around its encryption.
Local government officials had asked RIM to either share the data encryption code used in BlackBerry devices, or set up servers in India so that the systems can be monitored by Indian security agencies.
After months of high-level meeting between RIM executives and India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Ministry of Home Affairs on the issue, the government this week said BlackBerry devices do not pose any security threat.
The controversy, however, has raised concerns over data security
Recent activity
Indian Government is planning to establish National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) for assessing cyber security threat on a real time basis. The main aim of setting up NCCC is to to fight against cyber crime while monitoring of internet traffic. Recently a high-level meeting was called at the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) during which establishment of NCCC was deliberated upon. Officers from the IB, RAW, DRDO, Home Ministry and Army attend the meeting, was given a presentation of the proposal for NCCC and other cyber security related issues.
“Establishment of a multi-agency NCCC for real time assessment of cyber security threat in the country and generation of an actionable report or alerts for proactive actions…,” was the purpose according to minutes of the meeting. “The NCCC would scan traffic within the country, flowing at the point of entry and exit, including international gateway,” the meeting was informed. The proposed NCCC would be the first layer for threat monitoring and all communication with government and private service providers would be through this body only. “NCCC would be in virtual contact with the Control room of Internet service providers,”
The National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) will be set up to implement ‘internet security’ by scanning tweets, Facebook updates and other units of social media. This entire arduous exercise comes at the cost of a whopping Rs. 800 crore (~$163 million). This news comes on the heels of the fact that under the pretense of e-Governance.
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