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Nasscom launches Self-Regulatory Organisation

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CIOL Bureau
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NEW DELHI: Nasscom today announced the launch of the Self-Regulatory Organisation (SRO) – an independent body, which will conceptualize and come out with data security standards for the Indian IT industry.

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Announcing this to the media here, Nasscom president, Kiran Karnik said that SRO was part of the Trusted Sourcing Initiative, to strengthen the regulatory framework and further improve India’s attractiveness as an outsourcing destination.

“Shyamal Ghosh, a former bureaucrat and ex-administrator of USO, under the department of telecom, will lead the new organisation as chairman in an advisory role. His key responsibilities include setting-up of the SRO functionally and structurally, providing his guidance to the new entity and to kick-start its operations in India,” he said.

Karnik said that SRO would evolve data security and privacy standards in due course of time, which would be the industry benchmark. “We are working on Nasscom member companies getting accredited to SRO. The accreditation will be voluntary and not mandatory. Those companies, who are accredited, will have to conform to certain standards of security compliance. In case of any breach, we will disaccredit the company, which will mean loss of business to them, as market forces will decide,” Karnik added.

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“As for the National Skills Registry, we have touched 100, 000 mark as of April 2007, of these 55, 000 are complete registration and the rest are enrolments which are in process of completion. We are aiming at 500, 000 registrations by end of this fiscal year,” Karnik informed. He added that third party agencies had been engaged for verifying the candidates in the IT/ ITES industry, under the NSR project.

On taking over the new assignment, Shyamal Ghosh said he would first put a core team in place to study the data security and privacy issues in the Indian IT industry. “We will be forming a working group to interact with the companies, identify the gaps and plug them,” says Ghosh.

“SRO will be an independent body and would work an arms-length away from the industry. It would help the industry to demonstrate globally that India is capable of adopting the best practices for data protection and facilitate further growth,” said Ghosh.

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SRO will bring under one banner, Nasscom’s Trusted Sourcing Initiative, of engagement, education, enactment and enforcement. “We will bring together the best practices of big companies to be adopted by smaller ones, and evolve a common standard for the industry as whole,” Ghosh added.

© CyberMedia News

 

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