India to take steps to protect cyber infrastructure

India is set to take steps to protect itscyber infrastructure and designate agencies for carrying out offensive cyber attacks on other countries. The move comes at a time when proof shows countries launching cyber attacks - not only for intelligence gathering - and many nations describing the attacks as an act of war.

According to sources, the National Security Council(NSC) headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singhwould soon approve the comprehensive plan and designate the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and National Technical Research Organization (NTRO) as agencies for carrying out offensive cyber operations, if necessary. All other intelligence agencies would be authorized to carry out intelligence gathering abroad, but not offensive operations, sources said.

The detailed policy for national cyber infrastructure protection is presently before the NSC awaiting its approval. The policy would identify all government agencies that would have a role in the protection of Indian cyber infrastructure and define their roles.

The move to not just define defensive mechanism but also designate agencies for offensive operations comes as New Delhi tackles repeated waves of cyber intrusions, though all of them are aimed at gathering information from critical networks. But the next stage, of an adversary carrying out offensive cyber attack, of bringing down a power grid, stalling air traffic control systems, or manipulating controls of a dam are now believed to be a real possibility.

Stuxnet, the cyber worm created by US's National Security Agency and Israeli military and specifically targeted at Iran's nuclear enrichment center at Natanz, was found to have infected Indian systems. "It was probably unintentional, but an intentional attack on India's critical infrastructure cannot be ruled out," says a senior official. "We haven't yet seen a cyber attack, but only intelligence gathering. An attack that can debilitate our infrastructure is what we must be prepared for," he said.

CERT-IN (Computer Emergency Response Team India) would be responsible for protection of most of the cyber space, while NTRO would be tasked to protect the critical infrastructure such as important government networks. NTRO would be tasked to create the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIPC), which would be a command-and-control centre for monitoring the critical infrastructure. It would be a round-the-clock centre, providing real time response to cyber security breaches.

The proposal before NSC also envisages creation of sectoral CERTs in order to respond quickly to protect power distribution networks, Air Traffic Controls, traffic networks and other areas that heavily dependent on networked systems, and thus are susceptible to attacks.

The policy suggests that the defence forces would be responsible for their own networks' protection.

NTRO and Intelligence Bureau (IB) would primarily be responsible for security of various government networks. While NTRO would operate through NCIPC, IB would be mainly looking at the physical security of networks. State polices, CBI, NIA etc would be tasked to do follow up action, if any intrusions are detected.

Indian animation industry to grow by 23% in 4 years

 Looking for a career in the field of animation? Now is the time, as the Indian animation industry is poised to grow by about 23 percent in the next four years.

According to a recent report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers International Limited, an international level business consulting service provider, country's animation arena is likely to expand by about 23 per cent in the next four years. This means that the value of the industry that was estimated at Rs 18.5 billion in 2009 will now be a whopping Rs 54 billion by the year 2014. And this income has mainly been generated due to the growing reputation of India as a quality destination to outsource animation work.

This new phenomenon has now even arrived in small cities and towns where the fever of play stations, internet and mobile gaming is at an all-time high, thus creating not just awareness among the people but making it a popular career option among students.

Informing more about the industry, Lokesh Gupta, director of Academy of Animation And Gaming, said: "The animation curriculum is designed in a manner so as to develop creativity among students. It gives requisite thrust on foundation art, 2D/3D animation and multimedia. Regular workshops from industry experts and outdoor classes are held in animation institutes to help students gain knowledge in the field of animation." He further added, "There is a lot of stresson Interactive Learning Approach (ILA) which makes sure students get involved in the learning process and are able to understand the concept better."

Talking further about the subject, Piyush Kapoor, center head of a renowned animation institute says, "The past 3-4 years have witnessed a huge growth in the electronic, print as well as web media. The growth of animation industry is exponentially high as the operating cost is far less than the metros and at the same time the manpower here is equally efficient and experienced."

Animation courses in 2D which include mobile games and cartoons or 3D which teach about architectural walk through, television commercials, movies and special effects, have indeed opened up great job opportunities for young aspirants.

Coming up of several production houses taking keen interest in producing not just animated films and commercials for a global audience but the increasing popularity of on line and mobile games have also added to the growth of animation industry and raised demand for professionals. "Awareness all across has grown manifold with more and more fine art students opting for animation industry The fee structure starting from 50,000 one lakh is considerably lower than four lakh charged in bigger cities," informs Rajesh Varshney, owner, of another animation institute.

Another factor that has added to the phenomenal growth of animation industry is the anticipated rise of gaming, an allied industry. Be it metro cities or small towns, the gaming industry is rapidly becoming popular with not just youngsters, but serious gamers making the most of gaming and animation world All in all, expansion of the industry means that the time is ripe for students having creative inclination to dabble into virtual world and with fun!

Growing demand 

In the last couple of years, awareness about a career in animation has grown manifold, with more and more fine art students opting for the animation industry.

Top 10 Alternatives To Google Search

Google is the big daddy of all the search engines. But when it comes to topic specific searches, Google may not give you the best results. There are various other search engines designed to derive results for topic specific search. Here is a list of 10 such search engines that can act like the perfect alternative to Google.

 
1. Guruji.com

 
Launched: October 16, 2006

 
Known for: specifically designed for India

 
Launched by Anurag Dod and Gaurav Mishra, two IIT Delhi engineers, guruji.com is a search engine designed especially for the Indian user. It scores over Google because of its language advantage. Users are able to type in their own vernacular languages instead of transcribing the vernacular term in English.

 
The search engine also provides users the services for searching images, services within a specific city, music, cricket, movie timing, and finance. Guruji.com will work because its search is region specific.

2. isoHunt

 
Launched: January 2003

 
Known for: One Of The Best BitTorrent Index

 
IsoHunt is a BitTorrent index with more than 1.7 billion torrents in its database. It is one of the most famous torrent search engines. Thousands of torrents are added to and deleted from it every day. Users of isoHunt perform over 40 million unique searches per month. The site has been involved in several lawsuits regarding copyright infringement. But the site founder, Gary Fung wishes to work with the content owners.

 
January 16, 2007, isoHunt was taken off-line but after a major hardware upgrade, the site resumed normal operation by January 22, 2007

3. Answers.com

 
Launched: 1999

 
Known for: Gives Consolidated Responses Taken From Several Sources

 
Answers.com was created in 1999 by Bob Rosenschein in Jerusalem, Israel. The website was then known as GuruNet.com which later acquired the Answers.com domain name. This search engine enables knowledge exchange which includes wiki WikiAnswers, ReferenceAnswers, VideoAnswers, and five international language Q&A communities.

 
This search engine intelligently and automatically integrates and retrieves information from disparate sources and delivers the result in a single consolidated view to the user. The searches can be made based on several categories.

4. Wolfram Alfa

 
Launched: May 15, 2009

 
Known for: Answering Factual Queries By Computing The Answer From Structured Data

 
Wolfram Alfa is where you go to find answers to very specific questions. Instead of giving a list of websites as answers this site gives users the specific responses. The website was developed by Wolfram Researches. Wolfram Alpha is based on the computational platform Mathematica, written by British scientist Stephen Wolfram in 1988.

 
Apple’s Siri uses Wolfram Alpha for 25% of its searches.

5. Pipl.com

 
Launched: October 2007

 
Known for: The Best Search Engine To Search People

 
As the name sounds this search engine lets users look for people. The searches are done based on the name and location provided by the searcher. Its results are much more accurate than those of Google is because they use ‘deep web’.

 
The website not only produces links to all the profiles on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, blog mentions, and photos on Flickr but also finds mentions of the searched name in public records, including property records, SEC filings, and birth databases. It also finds e-mail addresses and summarizes “quick facts” about the person.

6. Yummly.com

 
Founded: January 2009

 
Known for: The Ultimate Guide For Food, Cooking And Recipes

 
Yummly is the quintessential search engine for food and recipes. It uses semantic search for search and ‘understands’ food on a variety of levels, allows users to search by ingredient, diet, allergy, nutrition, price, cuisine, time, taste, meal courses and sources, and ‘learns’ about users based on their likes and dislikes. Yummly uses this information to categorize food for search and make recommendations.

 
Yummly was founded by David Feller and Vadim Geshel in early 2009. Its headquarters are located in Palo Alto, California.

7. Scour.com

 
Founded: 1997

 
Known for: The Perfect Mix Of Search Plus Social Networking

 
Founded in 2007, Scour was originally named Aftervote.com, a search engine with an AJAX backbone with one mission: to deliver the most relevant results as efficiently as possible. Almost exactly 1 year later, Aftervote was acquired by Internext media, owner and operator of the ABCSearch Network and re-branded to Scour.com.

 
Scour’s aim is to find the perfect mix of search and social networking. Users are provided with a platform to vote and comment on relevancy.

8. Dogpile.com

 
Founded: November 1996

 
Known for: ‘Fetching Results’ From Other Search Engines

 
Dog pile is a metasearch engine that ‘fetches’ the best results from other search engines such as google, bing and yahoo. They also get results from video and audio hosting websites. The search engine is owned by InfoSpace Inc.

 
The idea behind creating dogpile.com was to save the user’s time by bringing the best results from other search engines together. The time-saving philosophy even inspired their name. In rugby, players come together and pile on top of one another. This is exactly what Dogpile does – it compiles all the best results in one easy-to-access place.

 
The In July 2010, Dogpile was ranked the 770th most popular website in the U.S., and 2548th most popular in the world by Alexa.

9. Goby.com

 
Founded: September 2009

 
Known for: Search Engine For Travel Specific Queries

 
Goby.com is a search engine for the traveler. It lets users search through 400 categories for things to do while they travel. Users are asked to input the kind of activity they want, their desired location and the desired date. Related results are shown accompanied with the maps of the area. Users can also share information using the Facebook connect option.

 
Goby was co-founded in July 2008 by noted database pioneer, Michael Stonebraker, Mark Watkins, Vince Russo, Andy Palmer, and Mujde Pamuk. The company received series A funding from Flybridge Capital Partners and Kepha Partners. The company is headquartered in Boston, MA.

10. Everystockphoto

 
Founded: April 2006

 
Known for: Search Engine For Photos

 
It is license specific search engine for photographs. It allows users to tag, rate, comment on or collect photos. The website has a collection of licensed photos accumulated from several sources which are presented in a systematic format to users.

 
The website is owned by Vibrant Software, located in Vancouver, Canada. The site is also connected to twitter. They also have their own blog and news feed.

Is Microsoft about to acquire Nokia?

Finnish telecom giant Nokia, considered among the most trusted brands in India, is going through a bad patch with its shares at an all-time low, triggering speculation that it may be acquired by Microsoft.

Once the most valuable companies in Europe, the mobile telecom equipment firm has seen its share prices fall to 2.20 euros in recent days -- the lowest since the mid-1990s.

The weekly Helsinki Times in its latest edition said the Nokia stocks were now below book value -- a situation described as "worth more dead than alive" rhetorically.

"The investment community is fertile ground for rumours, and there are plenty about what could happen to Nokia. One of the most persistent rumours is that Microsoft may buy the company," the weekly said.

"The alliance with Microsoft is a powerful one. Maybe Apple and Google have already won the mobile-phone business, and everyone else is doomed," it said in a report, quoting The Wall streetJournal.

"But that's what they once said about Nokia. Things change in this industry. Microsoft, which is desperate to play catch-up in smart-phones, could buy Nokia today out of petty cash."

The Bill Gates-led US software and tech giant has about 46 billion euros in cash equivalent, while Nokia's market value is 8.4 billion euros, the weekly said, adding there was no speculation on any other buyer for Nokia, ruling out Apple, Samsung or RIM.

It also suggested that Nokia could try to reverse its fortunes with bold steps.

Aakash 2 Specifications by June-end: Kapil Sibal

 The specifications for revised version of the world's cheapest tablet PC - Aakash 2 will be finalised by month-end, Union Telecom and HRD Minister Kapil Sibal has said.

"During the course of this month, we will finalise the specifications and technology for the Aakash project and move forward with its manufacturing," Sibal said at an event over the weekend here.

The tablet will be a platform on which public services will be electronically delivered, he said.

"I am absolutely certain that in the next five to seven years, we will be able to provide this tablet to every school and college student. It will also be available for the individuals who wish to acquire it," he said.

"The tablet will be available at as cheap as USD 35 (Rs 1,960) or even less," he said.

Stating that information is the most powerful tool, Sibal said there is a need for higher investments in IT, telecom and electronic manufacturing sectors.

"We need to invest in these sectors which are emerging as backbones of our economic growth. Over next two-and-a-half years, we aim to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchayats across the country through optical fibre and the last mile connectivity through wireless broadband," he said.

As many as 604 universities and 35,000 colleges will be brought under the national knowledge network in the next six months, he said.

At present, out of the 604 universities, 400 are already in the network, while of the 35,000 colleges only 14,000 are networked and data sharing has started among them at the primary level, he said. 

PM Sets up Mechanism to Fast Track Project Implementation

New Delhi: Amid declining growth rate and the need to arrest economic slowdown, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved setting up of an Investment Tracking System to ensure speedy implementation of mega projects envisaging outlay of over 1,000 crore.

The proposed mechanism is aimed at addressing delays in implementation of projects, said a statement from Prime Minister's Office (PMO).

While implementation of public sector projects of over Rs 1,000 crore will be tracked by the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council, those in the private sector would be monitored by the Department of Financial Services in the Ministry of Finance.

The decision to fast track investments would provide fresh impetus to the economy, which is grappling with slowdown. The economic growth rate during 2011-12 slipped to a nine-year low of 6.5% mainly because of slowdown in manufacturing and poor investment.

Several mega projects, including Posco's proposed $12-billion steel plant in Orissa, has been hanging fire because of regulatory clearances and land acquisition issues.

The decision to set up Investment Tracking System, the statement said, is in "the context of delays faced by projects on multiple fronts - security clearances, environmental clearances, other clearances, land related matters, etc."

Issues concerning delay in implementation of projects was raised by India Inc at the last meeting of Prime Minister's Council on Trade and Industry in December

Google, Microsoft, Infosys among ‘ideal‘ workplaces for IT grads: Survey

 Indian students are veering towards public sector jobs and domestic firms to find a cushion against an uncertain economy, which clocked its lowest quarterly growth rate in nine years at 5.3%. This trend, visible globally as well, reflects on how youngsters are looking at job security as one of the most important parameters while choosing their future employers.

While the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) andState Bank of India (SBI) emerged as the most preferred employer for under-graduate business students in the country, engineering and MBAstudents chose technology giant—Google as their ideal employer in a survey conducted among 8,356 students across Indian colleges by Universum, a global consulting firm that helps companies improve their attractiveness to prospective jobseekers.

The rankings also show that Indian business students (under-graduate) associate banks with greater level of responsibility, secure employment and high future earnings. Also, more women find banks to be an attractive workplace compared to men while in most other markets it is the opposite, said the survey.

"In a flight to safety we see globally as well as in India that students want to work with domestic employers, so for instance, in Germany a lot of young students are opting to work for the automotive sector which is one of the biggest industries in the country. We see a clear trend that banks and professional services are more attractive as employers among business students in India," said Joakim Strom, Universum's APAC managing director.

While security is a big factor driving students to opt for a job in the public sector as well as in Indian firms, a chance to grow their careers is another reason why youngsters get attracted to these companies. "The career advancement that one can manage in the Navratnas, the best PSUs in the country, is great for young employees. Whether it is a BHEL or an ONGC these are great learning grounds and they hire in big numbers as well," said Nishchae Suri, MD, Mercer India, a global HR consulting firm.

Among engineering and IT students, technology firms dominated the top rankings withMicrosoft and IT bellwether Infosys taking second and third place, respectively.

The average expected monthly salary for undergraduate students was Rs 49,729, while it was Rs 51,161 for management students.

What stood out significantly was that there was a gap in salary expectations of anywhere between Rs 7,000-13,000 (monthly) for women compared to men at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels, according to the survey.

"The IT companies have been popular for many years now and we are not surprised to see that a newcomer, Facebook, takes the fifth place on the engineering/IT ranking this year," said Raghu Krishna, Universum's country manager for India. MNC firm Hindustan Unilever stood out as the only FMCG employer in the top ten choices for Indian students.

Samsung Galaxy S3 hits store shelves in India

Samsung Electronics launched its flagship Galaxy S3 smartphone in India on Thursday, making an aggressive push to counter Apple's popular iPhones in a competitive market.

The 16 GB smartphone, priced at 43,180 rupees in India, runs on the Android 4.0 platform and features a 4.8 inch screen.

The Galaxy S3, powered by Samsung's quad-core microprocessor, also tracks the user's eye movements to keep the screen from dimming or turning off while in use.

Samsung packs new features such as the S Voice, its equivalent of Apple's Siri, and launched its own music service on the device. The S3 also boasts of an 8 megapixel rear camera.

"India is one of the top three strategic markets in the world for Samsung," a company release quoted H.C. Ryu, Samsung's vice president of sales and marketing, as saying at the phone's launch in India.

The company is aiming to outsell its previous model S2 that helped the South Korean firm topple Apple as the world's largest smartphone maker.

Meet the 3 Indian Innovators Who Have Made a Mark

Bangalore: Indian innovators have since forever, made their mark in the world of technology with great inventions and ground-breaking ideas. With a continuously exponential growth in the number of people interested in new technologies and numerous students starting their own tech projects for this evolving market, there have been many inventions by the Indian technologists like advanced GPS software and robots that have left the world awestruck.
On May 11, celebrated as National Technology Day in India since the 1998 Pokharan Test, the country awards its scientists and technologists who have made a mark in tech world. Former President, APJ Abdul Kalam himself felicitated the winners of the prestigious award for the National Technology Day 2012.

1. Ramesh Sojitra
Managing Director, Scanpoint Geomatics
Innovation: Created Software that matches satellite images with GPS co-ordinates
Coming from a small town in Saurashta, Ramesh started his career by mopping floors in a printing studio of Mumbai. He has redefined the Indian Geo-Informatics System with his commendable work in Scanpoint. The software generates 3D maps which can be used to plan new cities, estimate farm and forest cover, even guard borders at half the cost of what the foreign software charge. "It gives us pride to prove that we can compete with big MNCs," said Ramesh to IBN.




2. K Guruswamy
Director, Perfint HealthCare Corporation
Innovation: Designed Robots that treat Cancer
Guruswamy’s work has resulted in the most brilliant achievement by Indian medicine in the past decade. The Robot analyses the affected area and finds the part of the body that contains the cancerous tumor. By sending the data to its control unit, it then generates a microwave signal targeting the affected area and destroys the malignant tissues. "We are the only company in the world that offers the entire gamut of services in one package, from identifying to destroying the cancer," said Guruswamy describing the services of his excellent invention.

3. Ashok Atluri

Managing Director, Zen Technologies

Innovation: Developed Driving Simulators

Designed to save hundreds and thousands of lives lost in Indian road accidents every year the driving simulator of Zen Technologies simulates life like conditions of Indian roads to coach the drivers for real time situations. An alumnus of the Indian School of Business, Ashok says,” We've designed it according to Indian conditions, so there are cows crossing the road, pedestrians jumping in suddenly, everything you could think of on a typical Indian road.”