HC questions Maha govt on safeguards against data theft

Emphasising the importance of issues covered under the Information Technology (IT) Act, the Bombay High Court today said the Maharashtra government should come up with a system to protect and detect data theft.
A division bench of Justices S C Dharmadhikari and G S Patel was hearing a petition filed by a private software company seeking direction to the cyber crime cell of the city police to investigate into its complaint against an employee for alleged data theft.
"Is there a single system in Maharashtra designated as a protective system? Mumbai is supposed to be the financial capital with two stock exchanges. You (government) are sitting on a time bomb which may explode anytime," the bench said.

"What do you do when a bank or some other financial institution loses its data? These days almost everyone uses online banking where several personal details have to be provided. What steps has the government taken regarding protection and detection of data theft," Justice Patel questioned.
Justice Dharmadhikari suggested the police not to brush aside such complaints all the time. "Whenever a complaint is filed police looks at it with a narrow perspective. Instead the police should look at the whole Act," the court said.
"The IT Act is not about just Facebook and Twitter and other social networking accounts but also about misuse of financial information," the bench said.

The court has directed senior officials of the cyber crime cell to look into the issue and apprise the court on the next date of hearing on September 19.
According to the petition filed by H R Mantra company, which provides software solutions to other companies, one of their employee Sneha Sahu had allegedly misused data regarding quotations and clients list and provided it to a rival company Synergy Software.
"A complaint was lodged with the Charkop police on September 17 last year. A month later they asked us to approach the cyber crime cell in Bandra. In November, we forwarded the complaint to Bandra but after three months the matter was reverted to Charkop police. Following this we filed this petition," advocate Ramprakash Pandey said.