India has formed a high-powered committee with members from the Intelligence Bureau, spy agency RAW, telecommunications department, home ministry and Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore), among others, to specify audit norms for all communication networks to prevent hacking.
This committee will also spell out rules to monitor the functioning and operations of telecom gear makers who maintain and run the networks of mobile service providers. It will also help develop capabilities to test if any domestic communication and internet-related networks are being penetrated by external forces.
Government officials maintained that this committee was not a response to Chinese hackers exfiltrating sensitive information regarding Indian missile programmes, diplomatic communiques and its internal assessment on the Maoist threat in its eastern states.
They added that the committee was formed early this year, much before Tuesday’s report by Canadian researchers who said that they had unearthed a sustained campaign by Chinese hackers that has badly mauled India’s cyber armour. Experts feel this committee’s formation may be linked to several breaches in the country’s defence networks which have been happening over the last twelve months.
Other members of this committee include members from the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion of Telecom Engineering Cell, Cabinet Secretariat, National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) and National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC).
In another move to strengthen the country’s communications network, a parliamentary committee has sanctioned Rs 50 crore in a bid to design an indigenous microprocessor, as currently all electronic equipment carries foreign chips.
According to the draft proposal for an India microprocessor, the Indian Army’s WAN (Wide Area Network), hypothetically, can still be activated wirelessly by foreign parties to transfer information or compromise it, even if it is cut off from other networks.
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