India would develop its own futuristic computer operating system to thwart cyber crimes like data theft, a top defence scientist said today.
Scientific Advisor to Defence Minister V K Saraswat said the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) had set up one software development centre each in Delhi and Bangalore to develop such a system.
This “national effort” would be spearheaded by DRDO in partnership with software companies in and around Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi, besides academic institutions like Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and IIT Chennai, among others.
“There are many gaps in our software areas. Particularly, we don’t have our own operating system,” said Saraswat, who is also the director general of DRDO and secretary of Defence R & D.
“In today’s world, where you have tremendous requirements of security on whatever you do... economy, banking and defence... it’s essential that you need to have an operating system,” he said.
Referring to reports of cyber attacks in recent times and “susceptibility” of internet, he cited instances of “data taken away by adversaries”.
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“We have to protect it (data),” Saraswat said, adding: “the only way to protect it is to have a home-grown system, the complete architecture.... Source code is with you and then nobody knows what’s that.”
He said DRDO was putting in place a dedicated team of 50 software professionals in the software development centres to accomplish the task.
Saraswat also said DRDO had put in place a “complete framework” on the proposed commercial arm, which was currently in the process of securing necessary government approvals and was expected to be operational next year.