The revelation that Kafeel Ahmed, worked in an IT company, has not only startled the industry, but has jolted them about safety systems.
Kafeel’s association with an IT company in B’lore has highlighted need for improved security system
BANGALORE: The revelation that Glasgow's suicide bomber, Kafeel Ahmed, worked in an IT company in Banglalore, exposing the company to possible information security risks, has not only startled the industry, but has jolted them about their safety systems.
Kafeel, an aeronautical engineer, worked as a senior design engineer for Infotech Enterprises in Bangalore between December 2005 and August 2006, it was revealed on Tuesday.
The company has prestigious aviation clients, including Pratt & Whitney and Boeing for whom it carries out outsourced engineering design work from Hyderabad and Bangalore.
Considering that Kafeel was said to be associated with al-Qaeda activist, Abbas Boutrab, who planned to blow up planes in UK four years ago and that he was already indoctrinated by the time he joined the Bangalore company, the security risks that his employment with the firm posed and the concern its disclosure now causes are quite evident.
The industry reacted with a brave façade, but insiders said the disclosure might lead to a re-look by companies handling sensitive contracts at their security procedures.
A senior police officer said this once again proved that the background checks that the companies were expected to conduct were "woefully inadequate." "We do not even feel the need to buck-up since our security systems are in place," claimed a senior executive of Tata Consultancy Services in Delhi.
Large IT companies make their employees sign an agreement to abide by their security policies and are subjected to several restrictions while at work. Restriction on access to websites, the use of pen drives and CDS and a check on the use of email from the office are some of the precautions that the companies already take. Companies say they allow employees access to only relatively harmless data from homes.
“But nothing can be 100 per cent secure,” said Rajagopalan Trichy, the vice-president of J B A Infotech in Bangalore.
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