New Delhi: In an effort to provide secure Internet environment in the country, DoT is mulling to set-up a pan-India secure network with an estimated cost of Rs 450 crore, providing a fool-proof infrastructure for telecom and internet communication exclusively for government use.
"To develop and deploy a pan-India secure network and network-based services such as e-mail, voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP), mobile communication through a survivable and available network architecture for secured communication for government use with a government funding of Rs 450 crore," says the latest report of the Department of Telecom (DoT).
Many e-mails and VoIP users in India rely on services of foreign origin such as yahoo mail, google mail and skype. These services use proprietary encryptions, which are considered to be secure.
The service may be secure from hackers anti-social elements, rivals but still the communication made through these services can be accessed by the Government of other countries, where the servers for providing these services are hosted, by invoking the provisions of their laws, the report, prepared by the working group on Telecom for the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17), said.
For high security of classified government communication, secured communication network is proposed to be established for fixed and wireless communication at an estimated capital cost of Rs 300 crore. Further, Rs 100 crore for five years are proposed to be earmarked for operational expenditure and Rs 50 crore for Research and Development.
"For the security of communication flowing within the country, it is desired that traffic should not flow outside the country and should be routed through National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), a government-supported not-for-profit organisation that facilitates exchange of domestic internet traffic," the working group added.
A lot of intra-communication is classified. The security of this communication has to be ensured by alternative mechanism because neither it is advisable to wait for such a mandating and capacity building nor it may be appropriate to rely on the level of security provided by such a scheme as communication would still remain in open domain of interest, the paper said.
BSNL and MTNL would be reimbursed full capital cost they incur for building the secured communication fixed network, which is being rolled out by them on commercial basis.
Comments
0 comment