India will set up a telecom security testing facility to check equipment sold by foreign vendors for spyware and has initiated the process with Huawei of China, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said on Thursday.
Addressing the media, Sibal said, “The $11-million facility will be designed by scientists from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore.”
The IISc, Bangalore was entrusted with the job to set up a lab at an estimated cost of Rs 60 crore of which Rs 50 crore would be funded by the government.
Responding to queries, Kapil Sibal stated, “Apprehensions have been recently expressed in certain sections of media regarding Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore and Chinese company Huawei, to provide documentation, expertise, methods and standards for studying telecom equipment. This may not be based on proper assessment of facts.”
“This decision had been taken due to the fact that in today’s multi operator/vendor environment, risk to security of networks and related services, possibilities of theft and misuse of database, leakage of secure and personal information passing through the networks have nowadays increased considerably due to factors like service denial attacks on the networks, possible presence of malwares/security bugs in the network elements etc.,” he said.
The proposed Centre would formulate standards and policies as well as provide facilities for testing, validation and security certification for various network elements in order to render the networks secure and less vulnerable from internal and external threats. The Center would also involve creation of test bed facilities and capacity building for networks’ security so that each network element is tested and validated before integration with the networks.
In order to perform ‘testing’ on recent generation of telecom hardware being manufactured world over, IISc Bangalore had simultaneously approached several vendors (like Cisco, Juniper, Huawei etc.) from US, Europe and Asia to share internal details of their telecom equipments like detailed design document and internal architecture (both software and hardware), which are vital for detailed testing.
“Huawei responded proactively before other vendors and hence requisite MOU was signed on 15th June, 2011 between IISc Bangalore and Huawei,” Sibal added.
Addressing security concerns, Sibal said, “Huawei is not helping IISc Bangalore to setup any lab as IISc has already set up the same as part of old pilot project, wherein all the equipments and software are theirs. The MoU signed between the two is more like a non-disclosure-agreement so that the information that IISc gets from Huawei is not disclosed to others. Further, IISc Bangalore had contacted simultaneously several vendors from US, Europe &Asia to give the internal details, for getting their telecom equipments tested. Selection of vendor is an on-going process and more vendors from US, Europe and Asia will be selected for getting their Telecom gear tested, as soon as they respond positively to IISc/Department of Communications.”
In May last year, Indian telecom operators complained that the government was restricting imports of Chinese equipment because of fears that spyware might be embedded in it.
India’s telecom operators have been scrambling for new hardware to upgrade their networks as 15-20 million people sign up for new mobile phone contracts per month.
