Israeli cyber intelligence provider deliver India interception tools

Verint Systems, Israel's cyber intelligence solutions provider , is soon to get a contract from the Indian government to devise interception tools for tracking encrypted communication services, including Gmail, Yahoo.mail, Research In Motion's BlackBerry (RIM) services to Microsoft Skype amidst mounting cyber security concerns , a top official in the telecom department told ET.
Verint's leadership team recently met communications minister Kapil Sibal in Israel and indicated the company's desire to work with the government to intercept all forms of encrypted communications to address India's cyber security needs.
Sibal has also apprised Israel's IT & communications minister Gilad Erdan about engaging Verint to implement an interception solution. "Verint is willing to work with the Indian government to address the issue of intercepting encrypted communications like Gmail, Yahoo-. mail and others. It will shortly co-ordinate with DoT's security wing and CERT-In teams to implement a customised interception solution," says an internal telecom department note, a copy of which was reviewed by ET.
CERT-In is India's Computer Emergency Response Team which has been mandated by the government to respond to computer security incidents, track system vulnerabilities and promote effective IT security practices across the country . About a year ago, the government had identified 15 forms of encrypted communications , including Google's Gmail, RIM's BlackBerry services , Nokia's email offerings , Yahoo.mail and Microsoft Skype, among others, that it claimed could not be tracked by Indian law enforcement agencies.
Verint has informed Sibal it has supplied an interception solution for tracking encrypted communications to 77 countries and can customise it to Indian needs at its Gurgaon unit. Encryption basically means scrambling data and emails into codes that travel through a telecom network and later get reassembled into the original form. A higher encryption level ensures more secure financial transactions on personal computers and smartphones. Providers of such communication services have claimed that encryption is also vital for protection from hackers.
Most western countries do not allow financial transactions on the internet through computers and mobile handsets if the encryption level is less than 128 bits. India on the other hand does not legally allow encryptions be-yond 40-bit on the grounds that its security agencies lack the technical wherewithal to monitor online data transfers when the coding is beyond that threshold.
Sibal's discussions with Verint come even as the government prepares to launch its in-house CMS or 'Communications Monitoring System' , which will be able to track voice calls, fax messages, text messages and MMSes across all telephone networks in the country. The CMS is slated to go live by December. It was developed since the DoT maintains that monitoring and interception in most countries is carried out by their own security agencies.Verint may also advise the government in the CMS rollout, but this was not confirmed by DoT.