CII recommends amendments to IT Act

CHENNAI: Confederation of Indian Industry's (CII) working group on Information Security and IT Act has placed a series of recommendation to Ministry of Information Security to amend the IT Act 2000.

The recommendations are related to focus on newer areas such as technical neutrality, cyber security and due diligence.

Ranjit Pisharoty, president and CTO of Lason India Limited and convener of the working group, said, “The present IT Act 2000 has laid importance to e-commerce, e-business activities and cyber crimes. But, with the development of other areas within the IT industry and other legacy industries, which uses IT, the amendments brought in to the Act becomes necessary.”

CII has brought out a white paper, which gives broad recommendations to the IT Act. The white paper was submitted to the Ministry of Information Technology. The Ministry is expected to take up the discussion on these recommendations for a discussion during their forthcoming review meeting.

“The IT Act is strong in itself and just needs to incorporate certain mechanisms like due diligence, system audit and certain compliance mechanisms, for the welfare of the IT industry and other legacy industries in India,” he stated.

However, he further informed that the Union government would act as an enabler of the industry rather than being a regulatory body unlike the other governing bodies such as TRAI, SEBI, etc.

The committee has recommended inclusion of mobile commerce, among others, which may lead to several cyber security and ethical issues. CII has recommended a system, which would punish any intentional or accidental access or attempt to secure access to a protected system.

On Spam, spoofing and data diddling, the CII suggested that legislation should define the proper definition of Spam and a legislation to curb Spam messages was also felt necessary.

The CII has also felt the need for increasing awareness among the law enforcing officers and general public. Cyber Regulatory Advisory Committee (CRAC) should be made functional, as the industry inputs are vital to understand the international and national trends in IT.

Besides, Cyber Regulatory Appellate Tribunal (CRAT) needs to be formed for speedy delivery of justice and the criminal offences under Chapter 11 of IT Act 2000 should be subject to CRAT and the moved to High Court for further trial.