Bharat Rakshak

mahadevbhu wrote:the biggest IT firms became so because of maintaining a laser like focus on profits and money.

where is the money in aero projects? there are hardly a handful of companies that build planes and why would Infy address those technologies where the scope of scaling up is low.

Prasad wrote:TO give a simple example - canon, nikon, sigma are all high tech japani camera companies. They used to build stuff in japan, then moved to china since costs were lower. Yongnuo a chinese company started making knock-offs. Cheaper lower quality stuff like remote-triggers. People used them as throw-away stuff since it was that cheap. Now, they're making flashes that are quality-wise good enough that many prefer it as they're cheaper! They're that good now. All within a decade.

macaque wrote:In this program, we prefer to focus on working code rather than merely publishing papers

macaque wrote: So it makes sense to outsource fabrication till demand picks up to justify local fabs.

prashanth wrote:

macaque wrote:What is crucial is that all the design IP (especially the RS channel for Mil applications) originates and stays
in India.

Thanks for your reply sir. One question. How difficult/easy is it to reverse engineer the architectural level blocks from the layout level (GDS) design?

NRao wrote:@macaque,

* Any mentoring programs? Not internships
* Language of choice? Perhaps top two languages a youngster should master?

Thanks in advance.

Shreeman wrote:why the name macaque, can we adjust to a little more human sounding? almost feels like literally calling someone a monkey by responding with a polite address.

A fully operational cyber command is the need of the hour, given that India’s digital capabilities lag significantly behind regional and global players

Two things set aside India’s digital spaces from that of major powers such as the United States and China: design and density. India is a net information exporter. Its information highways point west, carrying with them the data of millions of Indians. This is not a design flaw, but simply reflects the popularity of social media platforms and the lack of any serious effort by the Indian government to restrict the flow of data. Equally important is the density of India’s cyberspace. Nearly 500 million Indians use the Internet today, but they do not access the Internet from the same devices. Apple’s market share in the U.S., for instance, is 44 per cent, but iPhones account for less than 1 per cent in India. The massive gap between the security offered by the cheapest phone in the Indian market and a high-end smartphone makes it impossible for regulators to set legal and technical standards for data protection.

Digital intrusions

Arun Mohan Sukumar


With little control over the hardware used by Indian Internet users as well as the information that is carried through them, India’s national security architecture faces a difficult task in cyberspace. India’s infrastructure is susceptible to four kinds of digital intrusions: espionage, which involves intruding into systems to steal information of strategic or commercial value; cybercrime, referring to electronic fraud or other acts of serious criminal consequence; attacks, intended at disrupting services or systems for a temporary period; and war, caused by a large-scale and systematic digital assault on India’s critical installations.

Indian authorities have spent the lion’s share of their resources tackling localised cybercrime while responding to major attacks on a case-by-case basis. Recognising the strategic dimensions of cyberspace, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) created the position of the National Cyber Security Coordinator in 2014, a welcome first step. There is, however, no national security architecture today that can assess the nature of cyber threats and respond to them effectively. India’s civilian institutions have their own firefighting agencies, and the armed forces have their own insulated platforms to counter cyber attacks.

Unlike nuclear energy, a neat division between civilian and military use of cyberspace is difficult. Just as the Indian Army may face serious cyber attacks from non-state actors in Pakistan, the digital assets of a major Indian conglomerate — say, the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation — may be taken down by a military. The asymmetric character of digital warfare requires a multi-agency organisation that is technically equipped, but also bases its decision on sound strategy and regular policy inputs.

What could such an agency look like? The first requirement is to house it with permanent and semi-permanent staff that is technically proficient in cyber operations, both defensive and offensive. India faces a shortage of officers trained in creating and breaking encrypted platforms as well as using digital networks for intelligence gathering. Were such a National Cyber Security Agency (NCSA) to be created, it should have a functional “nucleus” or secretariat. The second requirement is to coordinate the agency’s policy functions and operations. The current cybersecurity policy, articulated in 2013 by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, is basically a statement of first principles. The NCSA should be guided by a document outlining India’s cyber strategy, much like its nuclear doctrine.

India currently has a top layer of agencies performing cyber operations — the National Technical Research Organisation, the National Intelligence Grid, and the National Information Board, to name a few — but there is also an additional layer of ministries performing governance functions. The Ministries of Defence, Home, External Affairs and IT should be part of a policy wing that provides their assessments of local and regional developments. India’s intelligence agencies should separately provide their consolidated inputs to aid the operations of the NCSA.

Last, India should not hesitate to build its offensive cyber capabilities. This would involve the development of software designed to intrude, intercept and exploit digital networks. The deployment of cyber weapons is not a low-cost affair, as the digital trail allows adversaries to track and possibly predict the development of future technologies. Nevertheless, a cyber arsenal serves the key function of strategic deterrence. India’s cyber command should be the primary agency responsible for the creation and deployment of such weapons.

Given the power entrusted in such an agency — as with India’s nuclear command, it would report to the PMO — it should have political or parliamentary oversight. In particular, the use of its capabilities against Indian citizens or domestic networks must be guided and supervised by a legal framework.

A fully operational cyber command will take years to complete. It is the need of the hour, given that India’s digital capabilities lag significantly behind regional and global players. Whatever final form India’s cyber command takes, the government would do well to pursue a two-pronged strategy in the interim. First, advocate restraint in cyberspace as a global norm. India is an active participant in discussions around the Tallinn Manual, which is a set of non-governmental guidelines for engagement during war. A group of government experts will convene later this year under the aegis of the UN — India is expected to be at the table — to discuss norms that trigger cyber war. At these forums, India should underline the basic premise that it is impossible to thwart all cyber attacks, and therefore encourage nation-states to restrain from deploying cyber weapons. Second, the government should draft recruitment guidelines to hire and train a cadre of cyber specialists. Attracting such officers may require high pay scales and other benefits — a model the U.S. has aggressively pursued — but they would bring in India’s best minds. If India’s cyberspace has built-in vulnerabilities, it also has a highly skilled IT workforce, which should be harnessed by the government for strategic use.

(Arun Mohan Sukumar heads the Cyber Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.)

STPI @stpiindia

#IndiaBPOScheme for BPO jobs in smaller/muffassil towns, RFP is released today. @rsprasad #Digitalindia @GoI_DeitY

Peregrine wrote:Department of Electronics & Information Technology : ANNUAL REPORT 2015-2016

IT-ITES Exports revenue :

The Indian software and services exports including ITES/ BPO are estimated at US$107.8 billion in year 2015-16 as compared to US$ 97.8 billion in year 2014-15, a 10.3 % growth in dollar terms.
Cheers

VenkataS wrote: First year they have crossed $100 billion exports. That is awesome.

KJo wrote:Not sure who is right and who is wrong here.

Indian organizations targeted in Suckfly attacks
The first known Suckfly campaign began in April of 2014. During our investigation of the campaign, we identified a number of global targets across several industries who were attacked in 2015. Many of the targets we identified were well known commercial organizations located in India. These organizations included:

One of India's largest financial organizations
A large e-commerce company
The e-commerce company's primary shipping vendor
One of India's top five IT firms
A United States healthcare provider's Indian business unit
Two government organizations
Suckfly spent more time attacking the government networks compared to all but one of the commercial targets. Additionally, one of the two government organizations had the highest infection rate of the Indian targets. Figure 1 shows the infection rate for each of the targets.

When the ‘bad boy of startups’ asks a question on Facebook about what to do next with his venture, you cannot really blame the Internet when people go crazy.

This ‘bad boy’ of Internet, as you must have guessed, is none other than Rahul Yadav. Why is he called that? Well, he has a vibrant history.

Rahul Yadav was one of the former CEOs and co-founder of Housing.com, a real estate portal, who dropped out of IIT Mumbai to start the venture. All went well for some time, but last year in March the news of conflicts between Yadav and investors were heard where he asked investors to ‘stop messing around with’ him. The clash got a little out of hand when on July 1 a collective decision by the board was taken to oust Yadav by the very company he founded and built. The given reason being, “The board believed that his behaviour is not befitting of a CEO and is detrimental to the company.” Now that does not happen to your everyday 'garden-variety' entrepreneur, does it?

With all this happening, it did not take a lot of time for Rahul Yadav to receive both criticism and appreciation from the startup ecosystem. Where some found his arrogance ‘a recipe for disaster’, others saw a “hint of Steve Jobs” in him. His polarizing personality received much attention from the startup world and hence, he became the very much liked ‘bad boy of startups’.
What is Intelligent Interface (ii)?

In September, Rahul announced his upcoming venture called Intelligent Interface (ii) on Facebook.

The startup is an eGovernance startup currently in the development stage. The startup was created for the Government departments that will help them use internet and technology tools to save costs, besides expediting service delivery. At a Flipkart event held last year, Yadav said that a single simple online rental agreement can help the government save nearly Rs 2,000-3,000 crore.

Created with much hopes, Yadav expected to get his first contract from government by the beginning of this year. He also said that the venture has very powerful people on the board. Some of them being Flipkart's Sachin, Binny Bansal, Micromax’s Rahul Sharma, Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Yuvraj Singh’s YouWeCan Venutres. Now when these names get together, everyone knows that a startupto look out for is coming is coming to town.

To everyone’s shock, on May 20th Rahul posted this on Facebook, and internet went into a tizzy.

Intelligent Interfaces (ii) for Government is not working out.
Should I make ii for enterprises or come back to real estate?