Year: 2019

Anil Puri, CMD, APS Group A thought leader and an action catalyzer rolled into one – Anil Puri is a rare combination of a visionary, and one who has mastered the art of strategic and tactical thinking to the core. He has been using this combination to seed new ideas and to lead them to their implementation on ground. This has been a consistent feature of his career. Here he writes about the information security and significance of inclusion of security ab initio in planning to digitalize the company processes and services. The digital transformation is the fourth industrial revolution and has resulted into rapid evolution of the technologies like IoT, AI, Blockchain, Chatbots, Machine Learning and virtual reality in all domains of businesses. The digital transformation (DX) is front of mind for many CMDs and CEOs but too often security is left behind. DX is all about digitizing processes and services to make the businesses more agile and ensure operational efficiency. DX projects often fail since they involve security at belated stage, or not at all. To initiate a project, companies need to bring together people, processes and technology in planning and strategy phase for interface with technologies like AI, data analytics and IoT to ensure that information security is also kept into the loop. As IT and businesses fast track initiatives like Agile and DevOps to improve speed to market, security’s role is confined to post mortem i.e., the knock-on impact on risk and security. The thrust for giving value to the customer takes centre-stage and core security functions are left out of the orbit. The data breach in security less digitization leaves the companies more vulnerable. The advent of these technologies is causing industry as a whole to re-imagine traditional business models and innovate new ways to leverage data for growth. While the digital transformation presents a range of opportunities to the industry, it also brings huge challenges with it – prominent ones are ever evolving security needs and roles. Kicking off information age’s digital transformation has presented an infinite potential to hackers in the form of expanded attack surface thereby creating greater potential for damage since most of these devices are involved in critical business activities. Large number of companies are moving most of their data from on-site to host their servers into cloud environment. The technology developers and hackers are at war with each other to breakthrough their layer of protections. AI enabled cyber attack, called a Polymorphic Attack has posed a big challenge which can morph to avoid detection by traditional cyber security solutions. Conclusively, digital businesses are moving at a faster pace than traditional businesses and traditional security approaches. Hence, there is a need for a wholesome approach to include security in the mainframe right from the very beginning – conceptual stage to final implementation will pay rich dividends.  

The Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) New Delhi Chapter, US Embassy has been working towards fostering the public-private partnership between the US government, USA MNCs and local regional stakeholders. In continuation thereof, post a successful corporate social responsibility (CSR) run organised in 2016, the Council of OSAC New Delhi organised a Diplomatic Security (DS) Run on 19 October 2019 as an inclusiveness in diversity initiative at the USA embassy under the guidance of Gregary Levin, Senior Regional Security Officer (SRSO), US Embassy, and his office. This was also in line with the vision of Edgard D. Kagan, Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM), US Embassy to bolster US-India ties with the aim to work together for a better and fitter planet. Additionally this run does complement Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign for a fitter India. The CSR activity involved inviting around a hundred of underprivileged children from grades VI to XII belonging to a small government school based out of a remote village at a place called Jhajjar in Haryana. The school is adopted and supported by the event sponsor Peregrine which is a part of the Tenon Group under the leadership of their MD – Manjit Rajain. The run also had active participation of the faculty members of the Amity International University and their MBA students along with the OSAC members, their families and US officials who joined the DS Run over 3 and 5km formats. The daybreak run route around the diplomatic area surrounding the American Embassy was engulfed in a sea of purple T-shirts. Over 550 participants including the school children outshone everyone in stamina as well as enthusiasm and interacted freely with the SRSO Gregary Levin. The run followed community bonding over a healthy breakfast. The DS Run was a well stitched event hosted by the US Embassy and OSAC Delhi Chapter in partnership with Peregrine to support the mission of fitness and healthy collaboration.  

20 Policemen Honoured with Bravery Awards Prama Hikvision successfully organized the second leg of Hikvision Expo in Hyderabad (14 September), Bengaluru (17 September), Coimbatore (19 September) and Kochi (21 September). In this phase, the ‘Bravery Awards’ were presented to 20 policemen at Hyderabad (5 Policemen), Bengaluru (10 Policemen) and Kochi (5 Policemen) for their exemplary services. Ashish P. Dhakan, MD and CEO, Prama Hikvision India Pvt. Ltd., said, “We are happy to honour the policemen in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kochi for their exemplary service by presenting the Bravery Awards. We are committed to our vision of making citizen’s security a top priority. The awards are a step forward in inspiring the police professionals to go beyond their call of duty and enable a secure environment for the citizens across the country. The Bravery Awards truly reiterate our vision of pursuing excellence in security technology implementation in India, and encourage us to further set higher standards in security and surveillance industry through breakthrough solutions.” He further said, “Hikvision’s team of experts presented the best-in-class technologies and product innovations through technical sessions during these Expos. We also unveiled the latest products, applications and innovative solutions including artificial intelligence, AI cloud, big data and IoT. We got overwhelming response to our latest range of IP cameras, PIR cameras, access control products, video door phones, Ezviz cameras, face recognition terminals and swing gates, smart pole, ECS (emergency call switch) etc., at the event.” The Hikvision Expo in Hyderabad was presided by Tarun Joshi, Joint Commissioner of Police, Hyderabad city. In his keynote address Mr. Joshi mentioned that police gets great support from the CCTVs installed at various points in the city to curb crimes. The 5 police personnel of Hyderabad Police who received the award for their exemplary service and bravery on the line of duty are P. Radha Kishan Rao, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Task Force; S. Chaitanya Kumar, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police, Task Force; Narmadha Chapalamadugu, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police, (in-charge of SHE teams and Bharosa); L. Raja Venkat Reddy, Inspector of police (IT Cell); and Bhupathi Vikram Deva Raju, P.R.O. – Commissioner of Police, Hyderabad. The Hikvision Expo in Bengaluru was presided by Shashi Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police, North Bengaluru. In his brief speech Mr. Kumar recollected how a lady police officer Devika Devi saved the lives of people during floods. He said that after installation of CCTV in Bengaluru city the crime rate has come down. He appreciated the efforts made by Hikvision in bringing the latest video surveillance and security technologies through the R&D effort. The recipients of ‘Bravery Awards’ at Bengaluru are Prashanth M., Sub-Inspector; Shivaswamy C. B., Sub-Inspector; Vinod Jiragale, Sub-Inspector; Devika Devi, Sub-Inspector; Neminath Thakai, Sub-inspector; Shivamjurthy N. G., Asst. Sub-Inspector of Police; Shivashankara H. K., Head Constable; Ananthraju A, Head Constable; Siddharamanna P., Police Constable; and Purushottama V., Police Constable. The Kochi Hikvision Expo was inaugurated by Mr. Phillip, Additional Commissioner of Police who praised Hikvision for conducting such an event in Kochi, and thanked them for presenting Bravery Awards in recognition of the exemplary services by the policemen. The Awards were presented to Rahul R. Nair, District Police Chief; Sojan M. J., Additional Superintendent of Police; N. R. Jayraj, Dy. S. P.; P.A. Faisal, Inspector of police, and Subhash Chandran, CPO 12173. The Hikvision Expo at Coimbatore city was also concluded successfully with good response from the security professional community. Hikvision Expo is organized with the core objective of promoting security technology awareness among the security professionals, citizens and channel partners. As a part of their pan-India initiative, Hikvision Expo at Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Coimbatore and Kochi invited all the key stakeholders of security ecosystem partners. It provided the latest security and surveillance technology updates by experts in special interactive sessions and live demonstrations.  

Forces Network, a professional network of the military veterans in corporate, conducted a full day Military to Corporate (M2C) Transition Workshop at Holiday Inn, Aerocity, New Delhi on 20 October 2019. GR Reddy the Founder of Husys, India’s first publicly listed HR company, gave a wonderful talk on the ‘opportunities for veterans in the MSME sector.’ He had flown in from Hyderabad especially for this session. In a post event interaction he said that he was pleasantly surprised to such an energetic and positive community and looked forward to an enduring association with them. Forces Network is an online community of military veteran officers in the corporate which today has grown into a vibrant global community with more than 5000 members worldwide. The Network was founded in 2007. This 11 years old network, with members spread across the globe, firmly believes that veterans have much more to offer to the industry and the society than what the current opportunities being made available to them. There is a reorientation required for the military personnel before they can rejoin the civilian workforce. –Col Iqbal Singh (Retd) Founder Forces Network CV Writing is felt to be the weakest link in the job hunt process for the veterans, and therefore, there was a great amount of stress laid on CV writing in this workshop. With their past experience and learning Forces Network trainers have reduced this activity to a system based on a framework created by them. Not only was the framework shared with the participants but the CV makeover of several participants was demonstrated in the workshop. Nearly two hours were devoted to this activity with the participants made to recreate their CV from scratch using the framework duly assisted by the trainers. In addition, a live mock interview was conducted in front of the participants. The interview panellists, who were practising industry professionals and veterans, shared their feedback which was found to be extremely insightful and valuable by the attendees. Salary negotiation aspects were also covered in detail by an HR professional. Mindset resetting is also an important part of the M2C transition. With that in view a session was devoted to this aspect wherein a clinical Psychologist Sqn Ldr Meena Arora (Retd) conducted a few Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) exercises – which were very well received. The seminar was attended by close to 100 people. The participants were excited after the workshop. They felt empowered and more confident, and expressed optimism towards their second career in the civil. Most past participants have reported accelerated learning as well as faster realization of their aspirational goals. The workshop concluded with an hourlong mentoring session where selected trainers mentored the mentees in small groups of 4-6 people on a round table. They encouraged the mentees to ask any questions. The mentees found the session to be extremely helpful and cleared a lot of ‘cobwebs’ from their minds.