Himalayan News Service

Mumbai, June 24:

Stung by the claims of a fraud in the Indian outsourcing industry, officials and experts say there is urgent need to put in place stringent information security systems to combat cyber crimes. Experts say reports of Indian call centre workers selling off banking and credit card details may trigger concerns among global corporations to rethink plans to ship jobs like credit card billing and bank account processing to India. An investigative report by Britain’s highest-selling tabloid on Thursday exposed what it called “crooks in Indian call centres” who were selling financial information about Britons. The Sun newspaper said a Delhi-based website analyst sold an undercover reporter details of 1,000 credit card and bank accounts held by Britons, as well as numbers of passports and credit cards — for a paltry sum of three pounds each.

“This particular situation needs to be assessed before arriving at any conclusion about the state of Indian business process outsourcing industry,” said Sujoy Chohan, Vice President (Research) of Gartner India. “But going by the perception, there will definitely be concern among customers. The western media will play up the story because this interests them,” Chohan said. “Frauds happen all over the world. But the important thing is how do you minimise these cases. The companies should put in place technological and physical safeguards to prevent any fraud.”