N ews & V I ews National High-Security Number Plates to be Adopted by UP Uttar Pradesh (UP) government has invited global tenders for implementing the highsecurity number plate scheme for motor vehicles in the state. This step has come about in the wake of Cabinet’s approval for implementing this high-security number plate scheme for motor vehicles in the state through public-private partnership. It had also arranged a pre-bid conference of manufacturers and vendors on February, 2009 in Lucknow. With the total volume of work estimated to be close to INR 600 crore, the scheme is likely to see most of the 18-odd players, who have been approved by the Centre.
4937 Village Kiosks for West Bengal Dax Networks has executed an e-Governance project in West Bengal (WB) for Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd. In this project, Dax has networked 4937 village kiosks in West Bengal through its partner. This project comes under the purview of Srei Sahaj e-Village Ltd, a subsidiary of Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd. In line with the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), Srei Sahaj e-Village is setting up over 20,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) across the country, to bridge the digital divide between rural and urban India. Besides West Bengal, Srei Sahaj e-Village is also planning to set up CSCs in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Assam.
Bartronics to Help Establish 2000 Kiosks in Delhi Bartronics India Limited, has bagged “Aapke Dwar”, a prestigious project of Delhi Municipal Corporation to set up 2000 Government to Citizen (G2C) kiosks in the municipal limits of the national capital. The project, to be operated on built-operate-transfer model is for a period of nine years. The company estimates that the revenues from the project would be in excess of INR 5000 crores over the nine-year period considering the existing revenue models. This infrastructure is particularly important from the point of view that the city of Delhi will be hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2010. It is estimated that the project will generate a minimum of 6000 jobs to the local populace.
Jharkhand Plans the Biggest Renewable Power Project The Jharkhand Renewable Energy Development Agency (JREDA) is launching the biggest biomass-generated power project in the country in 2009-10, which will provide electricity to around five lakh poor households in the state at an affordable price. To start with, around 100 power units dependent on biomass will come up in five to six districts of Jharkhand. Each unit will generate 100 kw, sufficient to lit around 5,000 households in a cluster of villages. Four districts-Pakur, Chatra, Latehar and Gumla- are planned to be covered under the project by JREDA. Each of the units will cost between INR 90 lakh and INR 1 crore.
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Rajiv Chaddha Vice President-Sales VeriSign, India
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Over the last several years, phishing, and subsequent identity theft, is proving to be one of the biggest threats plaguing the Indian internet space” What do you feel about the current security scenario in India? Indian enterprises today are in the process of either establishing or reinforcing their security architecture. The increasing usage of IT, especially for online transactions by banks and other financial institutions has given a boost to the demand for security solutions. A sizeable population of the corporate world has presence on several of the emergent networking sites and forums; which has created possibilities of critical enterprise data being compromised. Over the last several years, phishing, and subsequent identity theft, is proving to be one of the biggest threats plaguing the Indian Internet space. Enterprises are now seeing the real potential of security solutions and infrastructure and they are moving towards leveraging them to accelerate business productivity. With the Government of India taking major initiatives to make the country e-Ready by initiating various e-Governance implementations there is an increasing need to create trust by educating the transacting parties about the confidentiality and integrity of their messages. This requires identification and authentication of transacting parties. Digital signature has still to gain popularity in government vertical in India. What are the reasons for it? The main challenge to digital signatures gaining popularity in the government vertical
is the relative lack of education and awareness about digital signatures and its advantages. However, the awareness is increasing rapidly among business users and government officials as the Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA) is working hard to educate people about the applications and benefits of digital signatures. Though deployments in the government sector have been less in the last two to three years; many government departments have now begun taking interest in digital signatures as part of their e-Governance initiative. After NIC has become a nodal agency, the government departments have started trying digital signatures in areas like tenders, data, e-Procurement and many other applications. Digital signatures provide a secure environment by assuring the parties involved in the transaction that their information is confidential and ensuring the identification and authentication of the transacting parties, so that they cannot repudiate the transaction at a later date. Currently what is happening in Physical Security devices segment in India? The proliferation of the Internet and new e-Business practices are posing challenges in managing security, access and delivery across Indian enterprises. Organisations are therefore compelled to protect themselves from both internal and external threats and security attacks. Across the banking & finance (BFSI), telecommunications, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and hi-tech IT manufacturing industries, information needs to be secured and access limited to the authorised parties. This calls for a combination of online security solutions and physical security devices/ tokens. VeriSign understands the security needs of an Indian enterprise and its key offerings in the physical security market include Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and One-Time Password (OTP) solutions. Currently in Government vertical where all are you offering services and what is the USP of those products VeriSign’s digital signatures + authentication solutions provide for easy and secure access of documents. In the Indian Government and public sector domain, some of the areas where VeriSign sees immense potential for Digital signature solutions are data management , still to be introduced citizen identity cards and income tax departments initiative for filing of returns online.
Nilakshi Barooah nilakshi@egovonline.net
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