Processing .....please wait.. 
The article has been forwarded.... 
News >> Technology >>
Govt. tightens security norms, now targets VPNs
By siliconindia
|
Wednesday, 27 October 2010, 18:25 IST |
2 Comments
New Delhi: After BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, the government will now turn the screws on technology majors like Microsoft, Google, IBM and Oracle. These companies provide technology and services for Virtual Private Networks (VPN) run by various operators in the country, reports Surajeet Das Gupta and Kritika Suneja from the Business Standard.
The government will ask them to allow intelligence agencies to lawfully intercept data. Failure to do so could result in the termination of VPN services by operators using their technology. VPN is a network that uses a public telecommunication infrastructure, such as the Internet, to provide remote offices or individual users with secure access to their organization's network. Many companies today have VPNs for inter-office communication. There are 25,0000,000 VPN networks in the country and industry sources estimate that the market is growing at over 150 percent a year.
In discussions with the department of telecommunications (DoT), the home ministry said intelligence reports pointed out that vendors offered VPN services or technology that did not conform to government instructions. It has asked DoT to issue VPN service providers and technology developers notices to provide solutions for lawful interception of data encrypted by these technologies. The home ministry has also requested DoT to initiate time-bound consultations with the service providers at the earliest.
"We have not received any communication on this issue from the government. Thereby, we are unable to comment on it," the report cited a spokesperson from Google as saying. While an Oracle spokesperson refused to comment, an IBM spokesperson said the company had no comments to offer as they had not seen any communication. "We have not seen any such notice and we will evaluate it once we do and then share our comments," said a Microsoft spokesperson.
The concern for security dominating the telecom sector is reflected in the various restrictions imposed on the import of telecom equipment in the light of concerns that spyware could be embedded in equipment provided by Chinese suppliers.