DATA THEFT GHOST HAUNTS INDIA
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Sting op may spell doom for BPOs
Published on Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 13:56, Updated on Thu, Oct 05, 2006 at 08:31 in 
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New Delhi: The Indian BPO industry is gearing up for Thursday morning blues. UK-based broadcaster Channel 4 has said it would air a sting operation on October 5 that would purportedly blow the lid off the thriving data theft scandal in India’s booming outsourcing industry.
The sting operation, titled The Data Theft Scandal, will reportedly show two Indian middlemen selling personal and confidential financial information of UK citizens they allegedly obtained from Indian call centers.
According to a prelim report published on the website of the London daily The Sunday Times (timesonline.co.uk), “middlemen” - in connivance with willing Indian BPO employees - offer “bulk packages” of crucial information like thousands of credit card numbers, passport and driving license details to the highest bidders.
“They even have access to taped telephone conversations in which British customers disclose sensitive security information to call center staff,” reports The Sunday Times.
Though there has been no official press release issued by Channel 4, the broadcaster has tied up with Hindi news channel Star News for the telecast in India.
A leading data protection lawyer Stewart Room - who has played a role in the documentary - has been quoted by national daily The Times of India as saying that some BPO employees were compromised for as little as £5 to sell out client details.
Room, who heads the National Association of Data Protection Officers in the UK, is quoted as saying that “the evidence is so compelling” that it would trigger “an official chain reaction against outsourcing to India”. He insists that the impact of the documentary would outrage customers.
The tremors of the impending sting operation are already being felt in the Indian camp, 24 hours before it is aired. The documentary is likely to stir up a big debate on data theft and security and has already ruffled the feathers of Indian authorities.
With the emerging consensus that India is being projected as being an unsafe destination for outsourcing work, NASSCOM chief Kiran Karnik has hinted at a larger conspiracy.
"Such stories go to prove the lengths to which some vested interests will go to threaten this global industry with its reputation for customer value and security," he said.
NASSCOM has also asked Channel 4 to provide it with details of the allegations it plans to air along with the evidence.
"Whilst there are a lot of unanswered questions, we take any allegation of a breach in our security extremely seriously. It is vital that Dispatches co-operates immediately so that the perpetrators of any breach can be brought to justice and lessons can be learnt. NASSCOM will reach out to the Indian police to investigate the claims made in the programme," Karnik said.
This is not the first time that Indian BPO employees have been accused of data theft.
Earlier this year, an HSBC employee in Bangalore was arrested after allegations of him stealing £2,30,000 from British customers’ accounts.
WHAT IS NASSCOM DOING FOR BPOs | |
| Industry body Nasscom is in the process of setting up of an independent Self-Regulatory Organisation (SRO), which will establish, monitor and enforce privacy and data protection standards for the ITES and BPO industry in the country. |
 | The SRO has already completed its initial round of funding and the final rollout phase, including industry memberships, is under way, Nasscom President Kiran Karnik said. |
| It would commence operations in the next 3-6 months and has already received approval of the Nasscom executive council, he said. |
| "The SRO will provide training and capacity building for small companies which do not have enough systems for data security and will lay down certain practices to be followed in this area," Nasscom Vice-President Sunil Mehta said. |
| The association would also open two more cyber labs at Pune and Bangalore this year for training police officers in cyber crime investigation and with more such labs being planned at Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata, Mehta added. |
| It already has two such labs in Mumbai and Thane and has trained about 1,800 police officers and expects to train 3,000 officers in the next 12 months, he said. Karnik said amendments to the Indian IT Act are in the final stages of approval and should be tabled in the next session of Parliament. |
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