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07 Jun 2003
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Indian Cyber Laws & Security

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Dear Friends,

India became the 12th nation in the world to adopt a cyber law
regime during 2000. The country's cyber laws are contained in the
Information Technology, Act 2000. The main objective of the IT Act
2000 is to provide legal recognition for transactions carried out
by means of electronic data interchange and other methods of
electronic communication.

Securing electronic transactions

One of most important concerns for offshore outsourcing model's
survival is the ability to safeguard all electronic transactions.
The most common way of protecting electronic transactions is
through cryptography (i.e. encryption techniques).

As of today a key length up to 128-bits can be used. Encryption and
decryption techniques involve the use of two kinds of keys, public
keys and private keys, both of which are mathematically linked. One
key is used for encryption and other corresponding key is used for
decryption. Each user has a pair of keys, of which the
private key is kept secret and the public key is open to all.

Status of Digital signature under Indian Law

A Controller who will be appointed by the Central Government will
control certification authorities. The duty of the Controller would
be to license, certify, monitor and oversee the activities of
certification authorities.

Penalties and Adjudication

If any person accesses the owner's computer, computer system or
computer network or downloads copies or any extract or introduces
any computer virus or damages the computer system or computer
network, data etc. without his accent, he shall be liable to pay
damages by way of compensation not exceeding INR One Crore (USD
210,000 approx) to the person so effected. Where a person
committing a contravention of any of the provisions of this Act is
a company, every person who, at the time the contravention was
committed, was in charge of, and was responsible to, the company
for the conduct of business of the company as well as the company,
shall be guilty of the contravention and shall be liable to be
proceeded against and punished accordingly:

For the purpose of adjudication, the Central Government can appoint
any officer, not below the rank of the Director to the Government
of India or any equivalent officer of any State Government, to be
an Adjudicating Officer.

Cheers!

Maj (Dr.) Amit Chatterjee, SM
Strategist / Founder ~ mailto:amit@...
MT India ~ www.mtindia.org
"The Community of MT Professionals"

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NEWS AND VIEWS :
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1) Offshore ops to get stronger privacy lock

India's Ministry of Information Technology and the country's main
software trade association are drafting a data protection act
designed to allay growing privacy concerns in the U.S. and Europe
related to offshore outsourcing. The legislation, expected to be
enacted around the beginning of next year, would provide legal
safeguards to ensure data privacy protection in India, said Kiran
Karnik, president of Nasscom, in New Delhi.

Currently there are no U.S. laws that prohibit that data from being
shipped to or accessed from other countries. But companies are
increasingly being required to comply with industry-specific and
state laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and California's
pending SB 1386 identity-protection law. U.S. companies must comply
with those laws regardless of where the data is processed or
stored, legal experts said.

http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/outsourcin
g/story/0,10801,81698,00.html?nas=AM-81698

2) NetIQ Prescribed to Manage and Secure Acusis' IT Infrastructure

NetIQ Corp. announced that Acusis is utilizing a combination of
NetIQ(R) products to manage and secure their Windows and Linux IT
infrastructure. NetIQ(R) AppManager(TM) Suite is managing Acusis'
entire heterogeneous IT environment that includes more than 50
Hewlett-Packard ProLiant servers running Windows and Red Hat Linux
operating systems; database applications Oracle 8i and Microsoft
SQL Server 2000; Web servers running Microsoft Internet Information
Server and Apache; Veritas NetBackup Professional; and Acusis'
proprietary AcuSuite software.

Acusis is also using the NetIQ(R) Security Administration Suite to
help protect it from internal security threats by providing
enterprise-level privilege management. For file security, Acusis
installed NetIQ(R) File Security Administrator(TM), to enable the
company to employ security at the file level. File level security
is an important facet of the infrastructure for Acusis because each
transcription report is saved as a single file on the network.

http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/cb_headline.cgi?&story_file=bw.
060203/231535572&directory=/google&header_file=header.htm&footer_fi
le=

3) R.P. to vie for outsourcing jobs

After years of watching countries like India and Ireland draw
foreign outsourcing business, the Philippines is on a strong drive
to capture a larger share of this growing business and it is
stressing its edge in human capital to sell itself as ideal
outsourcing destination for companies around the world.

Roberto Romulo, senior adviser to President Arroyo and chairman of
the private foundation behind the drive, said the Philippines could
have a hard time catching up with India in areas like software
development. But it has a chance to become a power in the bigger
field of business process outsourcing (BPO), particularly in
medical transcription, accounting, tax preparation and customer
care. The payoff could be huge. Research Group Gartner Inc. has
estimated offshore BPO to grow to $62 billion and total BPO to $178
billion by 2008, as competitiveness concerns and the search for
global best practices force companies to contract out business
processes to expert service firms for lower cost and greater
efficiency. Already, US hospitals avail of the services of
Medi-Type Transcription Services. The company based in Yorktown
Heights, New York, lets doctors dictate medical information by
phone, then transmits the recording to the Philippines to be
transcribed by clerical workers and vetted by Filipino doctors.

Romulo believes that in these areas the country has a leg up over
its rivals. Filipino doctors and nurses are familiar with the US
healthcare system and studies have found that Americans find it
easier to understand the English spoken by Filipinos than that by
citizens of India or even Ireland.

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/abs_news_body.asp?section=Business&oid=2
4892

4) AMA and software firm to develop more IT-friendly billing code

The American Medical Association and medical software developer
Apelon yesterday announced a seven-year agreement to update Current
Procedural Terminology billing codes. The new codes, which involve
standardizing medical terminology within health care organizations,
will be easier to integrate with electronic medical records and
computerized physician order entry systems, according to Apelon and
the AMA.

http://www.ihealthbeat.org/members/basecontent.asp?oldcoll=3&conten
tid=25183&datevalue=06/05/2003&collectionid=546&program=1&contentar
ea=118951
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Thank you for your interest in MT India!

The MTIndia Team
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