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Our Bureau

Chennai , Aug. 19

MOBILE commerce (m-commerce) needs to be adequately addressed in the Information Security and Information Technology Act 2000 that is coming up for review, according to an official of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) — Southern Region.

M-commerce, which is known as the next generation e-commerce, enables users to access the Internet from remote locations. An intentional or accidental access or an attempt to secure access from a remote device to a protected system needs to be addressed in the IT Act, according to Mr R. Ramamurthy, CII National Council Member.

Standards in remote access through mobile devices need to be established in view of the growing threat of terrorism. The CII (SR) suggests that regulations and guidelines be framed under other laws such as Companies Act, Securities Exchange Act. There is also a need to redefine the offence of cyber terrorism and punishments, he told newspersons.

In a White Paper on information security and laws governing IT, the CII said that the key focus is on assessing technical neutrality, cyber security issues and due diligence as per the IT Act. The Government should be an enabler as far as IT and IT-enabled services sectors are concerned and not a regulator. The Government had also agreed to this, he said.

According to Mr Ramamurthy, there is an urgent need to increase awareness among officers, police and the public on the enforcement of the IT Act. In a particular case, police constables went and confiscated computer monitors of collection evidence, but left the hard drives. A cyber squad trained in IT, code of cyber conduct and information security need to be set up to check the occurrence of cyber crimes, he said.

Mr Ranjit Pisharoty, Convenor, IT and BPO Panel, CII (SR), said that one of the important tasks of CII this year would be to create awareness of the IT Act and its implementation in the IT policies of companies.

The working group on information security that prepared the White Paper included 40 IT and ITES companies, and dealt with various issues of concern to the industry. "The Act needs to be amended to include a number of issues, including security, m-commerce and cyber crime," he said.

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