Microsoft sets up cybersecurity engagement centre in India.

US tech giant Microsoft has set up a cyber security engagement centre (CSEC) in the Delhi-NCR region that will help it work with partners to identify and respond to cyber threats in the country.


The India centre, which is the seventh such facility for the company globally, will function as a satellite to Microsoft's Redmond Digital Crimes Unit (DCU).

While Microsoft declined to comment on investment details, it said the company invests about USD 1 billon annually in the area of security research, innovation and development.





"The CSEC's mission is to help build a trusted and secure computing environment, a critical enabler for India's digital transformation. It will works towards fostering deeper cyber security collaborations with public and private sector organisations for this," Microsoft India chairman Bhaskar Pramanik said.

The company ran a year-long pilot out of its Gurgaon office, under which its team met with over 100 organisations in the country.


Based on those conversations, the team observed three common IT environment issues (which are also the highest cyber security risks) plaguing organisations in India -- unmanaged/unregulated IT assets usage, poor knowledge of cyber hygiene and inability to timely monitor, detect and remove cyber threats. 


"We believe security of critical information is imperative for our corporate customers, just as it is vital to ensure security and privacy of citizen data and transactions. Our first investment towards this was setting up our local datacenters in India last year, and now launch of the CSEC," he said. 

The other cyber security centres operated by Microsoft are located in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, China, Berlin and Washington DC.

Asked about the size of the India centre, Pramanik said: "While the India team itself will be a compact one, the center will be operated in affiliation with the Redmond DCU team and comprises of over 100 legal and technical experts worldwide. We'll leverage these resources to support the India cyber security environment."

The centre is also expected to help the company collaborate with government organisations to quickly and reactively address cyber threat and cyber attacks.

Courtesy:- www.gadgetsnow.com.

With captive centres, IT looks to hold on to deals.

For over three years now, there has been a steady drumbeat of news saying companies are pulling their IT spends in-house and setting up their own offshore technology centres, taking money away from the Indian IT services players. 

Currently faced with slowing revenue growth, Indian IT services players - including TCS, Infosys and Wipro - are looking at helping customers set up these captives for a sliver of the spend.

"In the past, larger IT players were not interested in setting up captives for clients. With growth slowing, they are also open to this. We are working on a project from a large manufacturing company to set up a captive and all the large players have bid for the deal," Dinesh Goel, India head at outsourcing consultancy ISG, told ET. Goel declined to name the client seeking to put a captive in India in this manner, citing confidentiality agreements.

"By helping, they can capture the setup revenue, and often, the first few years of operations. They also often end up with an ongoing relationship as an execution partner capturing 20 per cent or so of the ongoing delivery," said Peter Bendor-Samuel, chief executive officer, Everest Group.

Five of the top 10 life science services companies globally, adds Bendor-Samuel, which are actively setting up captives in India are currently using service providers. There were about 760 global in-house centres in India in 2012, and it grew to over 1,000 in 2015, according to the National Association for Software and Services Companies. Captives account for $19 billion of the overall Indian IT industry exports of $108 billion. Broadly, there are two models in which Indian IT companies are beginning to help customers set up the captives.

First, a 'build-operate-transfer (BOT)' model where IT firms hire employees and run the captive for a period of time before transferring management to the client.

Second, an assisted model where the IT firm helps with special economic zone (SEZ) clearance and creates infrastructure but the people hired are on the client's employee rolls from the start. The choice of model is typically worked out between an IT company and its client.

"We have an assisted captive model, where we help them with the initial setup and SEZ clearance. We do not do the BOT model because when employees are hired, they are Infosys employees and then they have to be moved to the captive's rolls and that can be complicated. We help them hire though," UB Pravin Rao, CEO at Infosys, told ET.

Infosys helped set up payment network Visa's captive in India last year, after its work was consolidated with Infosys and Wipro, Pari Natarajan, CEO of management consultancy Zinnov, said. He however cautioned it was too early to call it a trend.

"We have so far seen more companies buy captives and take them in-house than help clients set up captives. It is a way to ensure you retain mindspace with a client, even when the work is moving back," Natarajan said. Infosys declined to comment on particular captives they may have set up. HCL Technologies helped set up a securities clearing captive for Citibank three years ago in a BOT model, a source said. That captive, in Gurugram, had about 1,400 employees who were initially on HCL Tech's rolls before they were transferred over to Citi Securities and Funds Services. "It's not a high-margin business. So, a lot of other big players didn't want to do it before.

HCL Tech is actually one of the more successful ones at this. They are willing to make the investment up front, which is something the other large players are just coming around to," the source said. HCL Tech had not responded to a request for comment at the time of going to press

.

Smaller players like Zensar say they are open to setting up a captive, depending on the kind of work that would be done at the centres. "It is all about bringing business value to the customer. So, if the captive would be working on digital technologies then would be willing on work on those deals," Sandeep Kishore, Zensar's CEO, said.

Courtesy:- www.gadgetsnow.com

Facebook issues apology for pulling cancer awareness video.

Facebook has apologized for taking down a breast cancer awareness video because the images were flagged as offensive, saying the move was "an error".

Swedish cancer charity Cancerfonden said Thursday that its video explaining to women how to check for suspicious lumps, featuring animated figures of women with circle-shaped breasts, had been removed from the US social networking site.

"We find it incomprehensible and strange how one can perceive medical information as offensive," Cancerfonden communications director Lena Biornstad told AFP.



"This is information that saves lives," she said. "This prevents us from doing so."

In a tongue-and-cheek open letter to Facebook, Cancerfonden had offered a different version of the offending round cartoon breasts.



"After having tried to meet your rules for several days without succeeding, we have now reached a solution which will hopefully satisfy you: two pink squares! This cannot possibly be offensive," the charity wrote, along with a picture of the new straight-edged breasts.


A Facebook spokeswoman later apologized for removing the video, saying: "We're very sorry, our team processes millions of advertising images each week, and in some instances we incorrectly prohibit ads.


"This image does not violate our ad policies. We apologize for the error and have let the advertiser know we are approving their ads."

The furore erupted just as the White House was lit up in the colour pink to mark breast cancer awareness month.

Facebook faced outrage in September for repeatedly deleting a historic Vietnam War photo included in a post by Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg. 

It said the iconic photo of a naked Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm bombing violated its rules, but it later backtracked on the decision.

Facebook has a ban on posts that contain nudity, with some exceptions, such as images of works of art and women breastfeeding, or educational content.

The US social media giant counts some 1.7 billion users around the world.

Courtesy:- www.gadgetsnow.com

Trai recommends a Rs 3,050 crore penalty on Airtel, Vodafone, Idea for not providing interconnect to Reliance Jio

Telecom regulator Trai on Friday recommended a penalty of Rs 3,050 crore on top telcos - Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular - for not providing adequate interconnect points to Reliance Jio, finding the incumbents of engaging in anti-consumer behaviour in violation of the terms and conditions of mobile license conditions.

While it has recommended a Rs 1,050 crore penalty each against Airtel and Vodafone (Rs 50 crore in each of the 21 circles), Trai has sought a penalty of Rs 950 crore for Idea Cellular (Rs 50 crore each in 19 circles).

Trai, which had earlier issued a show-cause notice to the three telecom operators after Jio blamed them for the massive call failures on its network, said the action of the incumbents "warrants recommendations for the revocation of the license". 

Courtesy:- www.gadgetsnow.com

Mindtree Q2 revenue drops 3% sequentially.

Mid-tier IT services company Mindtree reported a 3% sequential fall in quarterly dollar revenue hurt by lower revenue from Europe, volatile macroeconomic conditions post Brexit vote and slower ramp-ups in a few large clients across verticals.

Revenue dropped to $193 million, for the second quarter ended September 30, from $199 million in the previous quarter. Net profit fell to $24.1 million from $29.2 million. On a constant currency basis, which discounts currency fluctuations, revenue dropped 1.7%.



"The volatile macroeconomic environment has resulted in slower ramp-ups and cautious spending in a few large clients across our verticals." chief executive Rostow Ravanan said on Friday.

Ravanan added the challenges, which also include project cancellations, will continue for a little more time and hence expects the current quarter to remain subdued as well. The company's UK-based unit Bluefin, a SAP HANA consultancy, continued to show weakness due to slow ramp up of clients.

"Customers are delaying decisions and cancelling projects due to external environment," he said in a conference call with reporters.

Revenue from Europe fell to 21.4% for the quarter from 23.4% for the quarter ended June. Revenue from banking financial service and insurance (BFSI) dropped to 24.7% from 24.9% sequentially. BFSI and the travel & hospitality had the maximum challenge on margins, which dropped to 12.5% from 14.7% due to severe pricing pressure in contract renewals.

Courtesy:- Times of India.

Government has sought report on debit card data compromise: Arun Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said the government has sought a detailed report on the extent of debit card data compromise following the biggest security breach in the Indian banking industry that affected over 32 lakh card holders.

The government has asked RBI and banks to provide details of the data breach and also banks' preparedness to deal with cyber crimes.



"Have sought a report in the debit card issue. The idea is to contain the damage," Jaitley told reporters here.

Several banks, including state-owned SBI, have recalled a number of cards, while many others blocked the ones suspected to have been compromised and asked their customers to change PIN (personal identification number) before use.

There are some 60 crore debit cards operational in India, of which 19 crore are indigenously developed RuPay ones while the rest are Visa- and Master Card-enabled.



Fraudulent withdrawals have been reported from 19 banks so far while complaints have been received from a few banks that their customers' cards were used fraudulently abroad, mainly in China and the US while the customers were in India.

Meanwhile, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said there is no need to panic over the feared security breach and promised swift action in the matter.

SBI is said to have recalled around 6 lakh cards while others like Bank of Baroda, IDBI Bank, Central Bank and Andhra Bank have replaced debit cards of several customers as a pre-emptive measure.

Among private sector players, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Yes Bank have asked customers to change their ATM PINs. HDFC Bank also advised its customers to use its own ATMs for carrying out any transaction.

The suspected security breach happened through a malware in the systems of Hitachi Payments Services, which serves ATM network of Yes Bank and also some white-label ATMs.

Courtesy:- Times of India.

What you should do if ATM dispenses fake notes.

When a Corporation Bank employee withdrew 27 fake bank notes from an ATM in Chennai this month, the spotlight is back on ATM security and customer protection. For customers, who get fake notes out of an ATM, usually there is no legal recourse as it becomes very difficult for them to establish the source of the fake note.

Tamizharasan was luckily a bank employee, and he immediately noticed that the notes were fake. He registered a police complaint, and the bank has promised to reimburse him. But in the case of many customers, that doesn't happen.

"Once you get fake notes from an ATM, the problem is establishing the source - that it was the ATM machine, the bank's network at fault and not the customer. Banks are never going to give real notes for counterfeits based only on the customer's word. It is actually a little worrying as this is the second case we noted in this month," said cyber-crime officials in the city.


In recent months, there have been a few other cases of fake currency notes being dispensed from ATMs in different metros in India.
The Reserve Bank of India has set out guidelines for banks that they will need to check all the currency notes received before accepting notes from depositors. Banks again have to check the genuineness of notes before sending them for refills at ATMs. If banks are employing ATM management agencies, then the onus is on the agencies to check the notes before loading the ATMs.


"In the confidence that they have hired professional ATM managers, some banks might not be rigorously checking the notes that enter their system. If the incident had happened to someone, who was unconnected with the banking industry, then it is possible that it would have been a dead loss to them," said cyber-crime officials.

On an average day, banks load Rs 3-4 lakh in intra-city ATMs and Rs 1-2 lakh in suburban area ATMs; in high-traffic zones like T Nagar, Parry's, Koyambedu, where there are high footfalls, ATMs are loaded with up to Rs 10 lakh a day. The RBI has mandated that banks should be equipped with proper authentication machine.

"We have currency checking machines, and check the currency notes for counterfeits, soiled and torn notes everyday. We start checking the notes as soon as the branches open at 9.30am and the ATM agents' vans normally come to pick between 11am and 12pm. There is a rigorous system in place," said N Raghunathan, vice-president, Lakshmi Vilas Bank.

Police recommend that customers, who have received fake notes from the ATM, hold up the fake ATM notes in front of the CCTV camera. "If the camera is not working, there will be a guard at each ATM. It is better to try and raise the complaint at the ATM itself as it will be more difficult to prove the origin of the note, once a person steps out of an ATM," said cyber-crime officials.

Most of the newer ATM range, brought out by ATM managers like FSS, AGS, CMS and OEM makers like Diebold, NCR and Hitachi have ATMs with technology for reliable banknote recognition and handling. "Our intelligent ATMs can now detect counterfeits during both cash deposits and cash withdrawals," said Ravi Goyal, chairman & MD, AGS Transact Technologies Ltd.

However, many banks still have ATMs that are 12-14 years old and with outdated technology. "Now that the RBI has mandated that all ATMs must be EMV-enabled, you can expect an overall upgrade in the industry and security at ATMs to go up," added Goyal.

Courtesy:-Times of India.