Consortium develops new security system

Consortium develops new security system

Hyderabad: Banks, financial institutions, and Government's introducing e-governance, can very soon, feel more comfortable about their electronic transactions, thanks to a new secrecy system developed by an Indian consortium.

sets logo The Society for Electronic Transactions and Security (SETS), headquartered in Chennai, has demonstrated a secrecy system, which ensures that two-way communication of sensitive, confidential and privileged data and multimedia information can be carried out securely.

The Hyderabad-based, Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL), will be ready to deploy the system for commercial application to the users.

"We are already in discussions with a few nationalised banks to demonstrate the utility of the system," said Dr M.S. Vijayaraghavan, Secretary and Executive Director of SETS.

The President of India, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, handed over the design document of the system to the Chairman and Managing Director of ECIL, G.P. Srivastava, in New Delhi on June 22

The secure communication system SS-v3 is used for transmission of data and voice over public networks in a highly confidential and secure manner at a speed of two Mbps or higher.

It is targeted for use in multiple applications including inter-bank transactions, large electronic data exchange, e-learning and e-governance.

Secrecy systems have been the exclusive preserve of the defence sector and to an extent the Home Ministry. The development of this SS-v3 version by SETS, marks the beginning of the availability of such highly secure features to be accessible to the commercial users in the country, Dr Vijayaraghavan told Business Line.

The RBI, for example, can send special instructions to all other banks through such secure system. Similarly, commercially sensitive data or sensitive Government information can be communicated securely over point-to-point links, he added.

SETS is already working on a similar secure, but next generation, point to multipoint broadcast system (which can transmit data from a single point to several geographical locations, especially useful for geographically diversified organisations).

BANGALORE: Military communication systems the world over boast of levels of secrecy and information security unavailable to civilians. Now, for the first time, Indian engineers have delivered a robust and secure communication system for general use, harnessing the same "uncrackable" codes and ciphers that defence departments deploy during war.

The product is the work of a team of mathematicians, statisticians and computer engineers at a low-profile institution based in Chennai — the Society for Electronic Transactions and Security (www.sets.org.in) , brainchild of President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

Working since 2002, with a grant from the office of the Principal Scientific Adviser, the SETS team has created the Secrecy System Version 3 (SS-v3) using the most secure algorithm currently available and being deployed by military users to send top secret traffic: the Advanced Encryption Standard or AES 128.

The number 128 represents the number of digits in each block of the cipher used to code the information — and as of today, it has not been cracked by man or machine. The SETS system throws in another current secrecy standard known as HMAC-SHA-256, short for Hash-based Message Authentification Code-Secure Hash Algorithm.

In a telephonic briefing for The Hindu , team leader G. Aswin said the communication security systems currently used by banks and financial institutions worldwide were based on either `public key' encryption (where one of the two keys to unlock the code is made public) or one where the `private key' — a shared secret between the sender and the receiver — was administered by the solution suppliers abroad.

Now the civilian sector in India could not only access levels of security hitherto unavailable but also manage its own `keys' using a smart card. Moreover, the communication system could transfer data at a zippy 2 megabits per second or more — it is fast enough for secure multimedia and videoconference traffic. The technology developed at SETS was transferred to the ECIL by Mr. Kalam at a function at the Rashtrapathi Bhavan last week. This is the first Indian product to flow from a public-private partnership in the area of Information Security and its compelling attraction for a Net-based industry, increasingly in need of secure communication, is expected to find takers beyond the `desi' market.

The other members of the Chennai-based design team are Kapali Viswanathan, N. Vijayarangan, K. Jayasri, A. Suganya, R. Vijayasarathy and R. Harish Kumar, with Praveen Gauravaram of Queensland University of Technology, Australia.