IBM has launched what it says is a state-of-art cyber security command centre in Bengaluru to offer customized security solutions to its Indian clients.The company says it planned this long before the extra push for digital in India came from demonetization, but the current environment makes the move look particularly relevant. Concerns about security are becoming top-of-mind for many involved as the Modi government aggressively pushes digital payments.
Sandeep Sinha Roy, head of security services in IBM India, indicated that those concerns are not misplaced. “We deal with an average of 140 million incidents a month in India,” he said. Incidents can involve inadvertent or malicious acts by internal employees of companies, or external threats. The new centre can offer tailor-made solutions for clients, provide alerts and advisories based on global events, 24×7 emergency response services for security breaches, and services to manage the security of devices being used by employees. It can ensure that data resides within the country and never leaves, a compliance requirement that some enterprises in India need to follow. IBM will bring the power of its Watson cognitive computing system also to the space, enabling it to provide a whole new level of analytics and instant response.
Matthew Newfield, Director of Managed Security Services in IBM, said Watson is being beta tested with 40 global clients. “We’ll start training Watson in the Indian environment shortly,” he said. Systems like Aadhaar and UPI (Unified Payment Interface) make the Indian environment different from others.
Newfield said Watson can do in seconds what a security engineer will take hours to do. “If there are 100,000 devices in an organization’s infrastructure, Watson can look at all the ongoing, real-time threats, and instantaneously understand which of those devices are susceptible to the attacks. If there’s a big security event globally, Watson can figure out quickly which clients in India have a profile that make them susceptible,” he said.
