Left to right: Capt. Felix Mohan, CEO - SecureSynergy; Lt-General S S Mehta, Principal Advisor - CII; George Samenuk, Global Chairman and CEO - McAfee Inc; S Mahalingam, CFO - Tata Consultancy Services; Priyankar Bhikshu, Executive Officer - CII

With a vision to facilitate India gain competitive advantage through effective Information Risk Management (IRM), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has launched an Information Risk Management service in partnership with SecureSynergy, a leading Indian information assurance player.

Launching the service, Lt-General S S Mehta (Retd), Principal Advisor to CII said that it is abundantly clear that security is becoming an overriding issue in Corporate India. He added that a new dimension, Cyberspace, has got added, that is "concurrently and consistently working all over us".

Capt. Felix Mohan, CEO, SecureSynergy elaborated on the IRM service and led the audience through the CII portal to present the different service components that it encompassed. The IRM service includes a Security Library, Consulting & Training services, Seminars, Workshops, a Correspondence course, a Newsletter etc. The function witnessed the launch of a comprehensive website on Information security - www.cii-ss.com which will be the service portal for IRM service delivery.

The launch function had a special address by Mr George Samenuk, Global Chairman and CEO, McAfee Inc who spoke on the subject of the global information security governance. Addressing the audience Mr Samenuk said that the growing threat to IT security is the most serious concern of IT companies today. This threat is being faced not only by companies but also by governments, civilian agencies, defence establishments, educational institution's etc, globally. With no letup in sight in the frequency of attacks, Mr Samenuk underlined the critical need for a proactive and automatic approach to face these attacks, especially in area of mobile phones, Voice over IP, PDAs etc. With respect to future expectations, he warned about attacks from internet service providers and those using high speed internets that would propagate viruses and worms. Phishing, Buffer over flow problems, Port blocking, Application attacks, network attacks were mentioned by him as other areas of concern. He also elaborated on the need for Automated Shielding with Intrusion Prevention for trusted systems. Answering questions from the audience Mr Samenuk outlined the emerging threats in IT systems, and delineated the manner in which today's CIOs are coping with such threats.

The Session began with Mr S Mahalingam's (CFO, Tata Consultancy Services) welcome address. He noted that IT companies are far from safe and need to gear themselves to meet the increasingly demanding standards of international disclosures and corporate governance. He added that the Indian Industry is quite unprepared to meet this growing threat as brought out by a Survey which found that 79% of Corporate India did not have any Business Continuity Plan in place.

This high profile function was well attended by CII members who included leading industrialists, CEOs and senior management personnel representing leading organizations in and around Mumbai.