'Bangalore, Mumbai no-risk data locations'

Amid ongoing concerns on security and data protection in the business process outsourcing space, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai have emerged as 'no-risk' locations in a recently conducted survey by Hill & Associates.

Hill & Associates is an independent enterprise security and risk management consultancy firm.

The firm has addressed a range of business risks including those of regulatory and compliance issues. The firm has a staff strength of 70 in India.

According to Ashish Sonal, country manager, Hill & Associates (India) Pvt Ltd, "Business environments are changing rapidly and India is part of this change. It is no longer about cost advantage. However, the interdependencies created by outsourcing has resulted in multifarious vulnerabilities where risk arising from mere local disruptions can severely impact operations, reputation and bottomline of a company at a global scale. In a survey we found that India is definitely not a high risk environment. Also, we found that Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad have emerged as key no-risk locations."

Other cities that were considered in the survey include Kolkota, Kochi, Chandigarh, Jaipur, and Lucknow.

Referring to the survey, Sonal said that Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai are also better in terms of the cost required to mitigate risks.

In simple terms, a company stands a better chance to mitigate risk in a cost-effective manner if it is located in these cities.

Having rated the cities as per the survey, Sonal cautioned that despite of being completely equipped with contingency planning and crisis management capabilities, the outsourcing industry is not making a "cohesive" attempt to prioritise and address the issue of data protection.

"It is only then that the international community can develop trust," Sonal said.

Sonal said, "Globally, 60-70 per cent of corporate frauds are estimated to have been committed within the organisation. This include factors like security breaches, loss of information and damage to reputation. In fact, we have a separate programme for pre-employment screening to address this issue," Sonal added.