Shri Dayanidhi Maran, Minister for Communications & Information Technology has emphasized the need for international cooperation on cyber security. Keeping in view the new threat of international terrorism, Shri Maran said, “ We must enlist stronger collaboration and cooperation and improve information sharing both within nations and between, for that matter, among nations”. Shri Maran was delivering inaugural address at the Indo-US Information Security Summit 2006 here today.
On the occasion , Shri Maran also launched the first ever National Skills Registry ( NSR) for IT professionals . NSR is developed by the National Association of Software and Service Companies ( NASSCOM) in collaboration with the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) in an attempt to further strengthen security in the Indian IT industry. This will be a centralized database of information about the employees’ professional and educational background . The NSR has been specially designed to ensure authenticity of data through independent verification and biometric identification of individual.
Delivering his inaugural address , Shri Maran said India shares an important partnership with United States. Over the past few years India and US Government have pursued the vision to qualitatively transform India-US relationship and build a long-term strategic partnership. Shri Maran further said that we both countries realised that security for our individual countries and for freedom throughout the world must rely on collective action.
Elaborating on the various initiatives taken for strengthening the information security in the country, Shri Maran said that Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has been set up to respond to information security incidents and provide the public security alerts information. CERT-In collects information on security events from industry, academia and other user organizations. The focus of the CERT-In is to help the critical information infrastructure in preventing the security breaches. Shri Maran also stated that Indian IT industry on its part is spending 5-10% of its IT budget on strengthening information security in their organizations. The creation of National Skills Registry today for enrolling all employees working in the information security area is one of the vital steps taken by the IT industry in the country. To facilitate the development of a reliable and secure e-community, Shri Maran stressed the need for the efforts from all quarters unitedly.
Shri Maran said the Conference organized by NASSCOM and information Technology Association of America (ITAA) will go a long way in strengthening the partnership between US and India in developing global technology standards and cooperating to make the world a safer place for all of us.
RM/ SAK/20060118/03-Nasscom
(Release ID :15023)