Friday, November 28, 2008

Aligarh police crack cyber crime

This a good news and shows the increasing awareness among the law enforcement fraternity in the country. Mind you Aligarh is not a Bombay or Delhi. It is pretty far away from the hustle and bustle of a big town and is a growing city.



http://in.news.yahoo.com/32/20081126/1053/tnl-aligarh-police-crack-cyber-crime.html?printer=1

HT
Wed, Nov 26 02:05 AM

THE ALIGARH police have cracked the case of cyber crime clipping on the google and youtube websites under the title 'Save Aligarh Save Aligarh', propagating employment of child labourers for manufacturing of hardware and locks in five biggest export players homes, including prominent exporter Prashant Enterprises, in Aligarh. On the basis of an FIR lodged by Managing Director of Prashant Enterprises, Aligarh, Ramesh Chand Singhal charging the google clip - which propagated the name of his export home - with mischief by showing Prashant Enterprises using child labourers in its video clip, the Aligarh police raided the office of one news channel based in Sector 6, Noida and arrested Ram Nagina Yadav, an Information technical head of the news channel and detained its other two employees Rudra Pratap and Gaurav Garg for interrogation in the matter. Superintendent of Police (City) Man Singh Chauhan told HT that Singhal had lodged the FIR on October 20 under IT Act that some unidentified person had uploaded a video clipping showing child labours were working in his unit and that the video clip was being posted on google.com and brought to the notice of major importers of the Western countries with whom Prashant Enterprises has export ties. Singhal stated in his FIR that the said clip was fabricated to defame his concern at the national and international levels due to which Prashant Enterprise had not only suffered a substantial loss in its export business but it also received threats, Chauhan added. He further said during the investigation, the police also cracked the e-mail identity which had uploaded the said video clip on Google website. This exposed that the clip was uploaded by the office of a news channel situated in Sector 6 in Noida, he said. Thereafter, the Aligarh police raided the office of the news channel on Sunday, he said. Chauhan further added during the interrogation the three employees of the channel disclosed that their employer Surendra Gupta and his sons Abhishek and Sunil Gupta had directed them to upload the clip on the google website through Rudra Pratap's e-mail address. Efforts are on to nab Surendra Gupta and his sons, who also run an export business, he added. Meanwhile, the news channel's owner Surendra Gupta told journalists here over phone that he had received this video clip from one television reporter of Aligarh but he refused to telecast the video clip, as his channel was not functioning in Aligarh. "I have no knowledge as to who had uploaded this video clip on the internet," he said.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Compliance is the fuel for InfoSec initiatives ?

The law is a strong whip to crack when you need to get people in line and the need to comply with the law of the land where you are from and the law of the land where you work increases the stress levels of individuals and organizations.

It is a known fact that IT, IS, Governance, IT Risk Mgt are always short changed in terms of funding. However, it is also known that Compliance requirements are disposed off with no thought of expense. Consider the billions spent on SOX compliance which could have been saved substantially if these very corporations had a semblance of Security / Governance / Risk Management best practices in place !!

But no ! They all had to build it all from scratch and in doing so they spent millions, nay they spent billions.

Having spent this money, they sat back and waited for the next compliance need since the 'SOX project' was over. Well we now see that they did not learn anything from SOXing their corporations since everything was done just for the sake of doing it and not for the spirit. Else they would have been able to discover the fact that the banking system was rotten within and would not be able to survive another few years.

Dear reader, you know all about Enron and WorldCom. Well they just screwed a few pension funds and a few thousand employees. They did not bring the financial system to collapse point. They did not bring G-8 and G-x government heads together to pump billions into the system. Their collapse did not bring about a global meltdown. Their collapse did not screw investors worldwide, it did not butcher governments, trade, manufacturing, support etc etc.

I think a few thousand billions have already been poured into this black hole and they are still crying for more.

Well coming back to Compliance - it is time to take advantage of this whip and turn the whiplash into a pat on the back. Time to move ahead of the pack and turn this "requirement" into a strength and extract a pound for every penny spent.

Welcome to the thought of Unified Compliance or Integrated Compliance or whatever you may call it.

I had made a presentation ICAI in India, and at iSAFE in Dubai last month in October. Follow the link to download these, if you are interested.