Certification mark for outsourcing industry soon

“We are planning to introduce a certification mark for the outsourcing industry in India,” said Kamlesh Bajaj,CEO,DSCI. He was speaking on the sidelines of the inauguration of the Ahmedabad chapter of DSCI — the tenth in India.

Bajaj said DSCI had made a presentation of its best practices on data security and privacy at the Privacy Commissioner’s conference in Madrid last year,where it was well received by the various participating countries.

DSCI Chairman Shyamal Ghosh said: “The initiative by NASSCOM will help create a USP for the IT sector where countries like The Philippines and Kazakhstan are catching up fast at the lower end of the market. This will give India a competitive edge globally.”

Data security is gaining prominence in the industry. The DSCI-KPMG survey 2009 revealed that majority of the participants in the survey rated both data security and data privacy as “top priority” or “critical” to their organisation. In several cases it was found that the threats were internal.

“We are working on the best practices as far as the internal threat is concerned. The best practices will include stringent checks,structure and more people to be held responsible if critical information is leaked out by an employee or an insider,” said Bajaj.

He added: “The survey shows that 56 per cent of the 150 respondents have five or more people in their information security team. Besides,the management is also investing in the development of skills. Eighty nine per cent of them have conducted audits of which close to 69 per cent have conducted process audits while 53 per cent have conducted vulnerability assessment and penetration testing.”