Day 3/ Session 9

Panel Discussion - IT in Homeland Security

Panel Discussion on IT in Homeland Security

For companies and government departments alike, IT plays a major role in their day-to-day functioning. The Indian government and its various departments have already realized this and hence for the last few years they have been pushing forth the agenda of setting up a proper IT system so that it can act as an enabler.

It was in this background that a special panel discussion on IT in Homeland Security was held on day 3 of the Technology Sabha. The panel included luminaries such as Major General Rajesh Pant, Additional Director General - Information Systems, Indian Army; Pratap Reddy, Director - Cyber Security, Nasscom; Anil Sagar, Director - DoIT, Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT India); and Dr. Harish Kumar, Head of IT, Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (MoEF).

The panel discussion was moderated by Dr. Nitin Paranjape, CEO of Maxoffice Services. The Indian Army's Rajesh Pant set the ball rolling with a brief backgrounder on the Indian Army and his responsibilities including framing the policy for all the IT and information systems in the Army. He handles the procurements including all types of operational systems, management information systems, and also the geographical information systems.

According to Pant, the aspect of Homeland Security is basically a US concept because that is the way that they function. As far as India is concerned, “There is a linkage between our external as well as internal threats. It's not a clear divide. Accordingly, the infrastructure has to come up and to that extent initiatives like UID and National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) amongst others are on the right lines. These initiatives were required in our country for a long time.”

Pant also pointed out that rather than IT, he wants to expand the field to GIT i.e. Geospatial Information Technology. Today, we could see GIS applications coming into the picture in a big way. The vendors and service providers too should look at the GIS aspect both at the data structure part and the GIS applications.

Taking the conversation further, Pratap Reddy of Nasscom highlighted two areas on which he is presently working. One is promoting the culture of cyber security, wherein he is trying to see how, in organizations across sectors, e-governance solutions can seamlessly adapt and implement cyber security into their systems. The other area is building a capacity of cyber security and incident response management on a reasonable scale.

“One of the major requirements for all the leaders heading the various e-governance initiatives is that each one of us sitting here today are liable for security of the systems that we head as per the new amendment in the Information Technology Act. It is because it clearly says that reasonable security measures and due diligence are built in the Act that has been brought in and to that extent it is imperative for each one of us to think internally. We have to think that cyber security and information security is built into the e-governance plans and services that we roll out, otherwise it will become extremely tough,” said Reddy.

Reddy further opined that as far as IT in Homeland Security was concerned, we had to think about how well we could integrate the various initiatives that were being taken forward. It is because when we think of Homeland Security, we don't just talk about standalone physical security but also any of the systems failing can have a substantial negative impact on the entire system.

Giving his perspective on the same, Anil Sagar, CERT India, said, “I would like to add communication to this and make it ICT rather than just IT. For me, Homeland Security is national security and how best we can use ICT in securing our nation. ICT is being used as a tool of control centers for handling any kind of crisis. Subsequently, it could be used for the improved communication system.”

Citing an example, Sagar pointed out that recently the Andhra Pradesh Police has started using the Radio communication system, which is a secure wireless communication device. This kind of communication system can be used by our law enforcement agencies who are involved in crisis management and for other security purposes.

As per Sagar, ICT can also be used for intelligence gathering. For national security, we need to have the right kind of information at the right time. For intelligence gathering, we can use different techniques. Next, it can be used for surveillance and monitoring.

In his concluding remarks, Harish Kumar reiterated that as forestry is becoming important these days because of climate change and other issues, “We at ICFRE have developed NeGP type of infrastructure connecting our institution with the network and with the data center at Dehradun and other locations in the country.”

“For me, when it comes to security, it is not just organizations taking initiatives for cyber security. Even a normal Internet user should be aware of security risks. In my view, if we are talking about cyber security, we have to synthesize our ISPs and, down the line, those people who give broadband connections. ISPs have to deliver quality of service so that the users are not put to risk,” concluded Kumar.