IDRBT setting up banking, finance e-security monitor

In a step towards securing the Indian banking and financial sector, the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) is setting up the Indian Financial Computer Emergency Response Team (Inficert).

As part of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In), established by the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India, each sector needs to set up a "sub-cert".

Inficert is the sub-cert for the Indian banking and financial sector.

"Inficert will provide both proactive and reactive services for enhancing security in the banking and financial sector and will work for creating awareness on various aspects of security in banking services. The institute will serve as a central point to respond to computer security incidents in the sector and will also facilitate in solving computer emergencies," says S S Subramanian, chief general manager, IDRBT.

Inficert will monitor security-related developments in the global scenario, send out advisory information, conduct training/workshops, carry out risk analysis on security and share the outcomes, carry out evaluation of security products, interact with various security product developers/manufacturers, and provide recommendations to meet various emergencies.

"The institute will be the single point of contact for reporting computer security issues of banks and financial institutions (FIs) in the country. It is setting up a 24x7 contact centre to react to the incident reports from banks/FIs and will provide support to system administrators and IT managers. Inficert will also evaluate the impact of the incidents and maintain feedback on the status for future references," says Subramanian.

Cert-In serves as a nodal agency for the security and protection of the critical infrastructure of the country. Such teams already exist across the world.

The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) exists as a cooperative international body of Computer Security Incident Response Teams and at the regional level, there are "Certs" established across the globe.

In the Asia Pacific region, they are known as "Apcert" and in the European region as "European Cert".