August 30, 2004 (Computerworld) --
BANGALORE -- Data security and privacy are slowly emerging as handy new issues for rallying opposition to offshore outsourcing, some Indian IT executives lament. So the more controls in place, the better it is for both the vendor and the client, they maintain. "Outsourcing is an emotive issue in an election year," said Akshaya Bhargava, CEO of Progeon Ltd., a business process outsourcing subsidiary of Infosys Technologies Ltd. in Bangalore. "To the extent that you can mitigate the risk in the minds of your customer, the better off they are and we are." The recent backlash in the U.S. against offshore outsourcing has made many Indian software executives cautious about what they say publicly about the heightened concerns relating to data security and privacy. But executives at many companies say it's important that security concerns related to work in India not be blown out of proportion. "It's an election year, so there's been a bit of hype around it," said Sudip Banerjee, president of enterprise solutions at Wipro Technologies Ltd. "Even though people think of India with concern, I think those concerns have already been addressed by the industry," added S. Gopalakrishnan. chief operating officer at Infosys. Indian IT vendors, which sometimes do work for companies that might be rivals in the U.S., have over the years established strong practices for protecting intellectual property, claimed Satish Joshi, chief technology officer at Mumbai-based Patni Computer Systems. Many companies have long employed practices such as network segmentation and housing project teams separately when they're working for companies that compete with each other. Employees are also routinely required to sign confidentiality agreements and to refrain from working on a similar project for a rival company for a specified period of time. "There have been instances when a person who worked with us went off and tried working somewhere else," Joshi said. "We've had to inform the prospective employers about that person's legal obligations under such contracts." Several executives pointed to the certifications from international standards bodies that Indian companies have earned as a measure of the robustness of their security measures. Most of the large Indian service providers were also established in -- and still operate out of -- specially zoned software technology parks with tight controls on the movement of people and goods in and out of the area, Gopalakrishnan noted. "So what I'm saying is, a lot of controls were in place even before," he said. A majority of the security concerns related to offshore outsourcing, including the threat from spam, ID theft and malicious hackers, are common to U.S.-based companies as well and require similar measures, Indian executives said. At
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