Italian firm, e2Labs sign MoU for IT security training

Zone-h, an Italy-based independent observatory of server-side cybercrimes, on Wednesday entered into an MoU with Hyderabad-based internet security solutions provider e2Labs, to bring its IT security training to IT and state sectors in the Indian sub-continent.

As per the exclusive tie-up, e2Labs will be the sole partner for Zone-h in training, services, consultancy, seminars and boot camps for the Indian territory that includes Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan.

Addressing a press conference in Hyderabad on Wednesday, Roberto Preatoni, founder and chief executive officer of Zone-h, said the partnership would kick off operations with a six-day training programme in hacking, wi-fi security and web application security for corporates from the first week of May 2007. "We expect the partnership to generate revenues of around 1 million Euros in the first year," he added.

According to him, the IT infrastructure of India, which is now vital for communication, commerce and control of physical infrastructure, is highly vulnerable to terrorist and criminal attacks.

Stating that efforts were on from German and Chinese hackers to hack the Indian cyber space for industrial espionage, Roberto said, "India is now the biggest outsourcing source of IT and other related technologies, and therefore, if one has to look at information espionage, it will definitely be India."

Lack of proper knowledge, especially in a country like India where the use of online apparatus is just gaining momentum, is exposing many organisations to potential security risk.

"Better education for users will help eradicate these threats and the real solution is not in technology alone. It is in people, best practices and effective training," he said.

A study conducted by the department of information technology has revealed that in the first half of 2006, India has been the favoured target for internet hackers. And, the analysis that was carried out by the Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In), which takes care of computer security-related incidents, has stated that in the first half till June 2006, a total of 1,752 Indian websites were defaced, of which 29 were '.gov.in'.

A huge number of Indian top-level domain sites including .co.in, .net.in, .gov.in, .org.in and .nic.in were defaced, of which 68.3 per cent was in the commercial sector and 27.3 per cent in the government sector, he added.

Since there is no physical or economic security without effective cyber security, it's time the governments re-look at their security systems both in their physical and cyber space, he added.