The high growth of data services witnessed in India has paved the way for various innovations to meet the requirements of Smart Cities and Digital India initiatives. While the landscape for cloud computing, internet of things and machine to machine is emerging in India, it becomes important to take stock of security concerns and other challenges hindering its adoption. Ashish Dhakan, CEO and MD, Prama Hikvision shares his views on upcoming technologies to meet data demands, entailed security issues and the way forward for the IT/telecom space…

With data traffic growing exponentially each year, what technologies can be implemented to optimize networks and improve network coverage and capacity?

Data has exploded in the recent years. Mobile data consumption has already grown phenomenally and is set to continue to accelerate in the coming years. According to Cisco's Visual Networking Index, by 2017, India's mobile data traffic is expected to reach 900 petabytes per month, up from 15 petabytes per month in 2012.

The explosive growth of mobile data services has imposed higher requirements for network capacity. Coverage optimisation involves equipment selection, solution deployment, indoor and outdoor synergy, and parameter configuration. It is designed specifically for distribute antenna system, in-depth coverage and special scenarios such as high-speed rails and tunnels. Other terrains like oceans, forests and grasslands, where few sites are required and networks are built quickly; ultra-long coverage solution is an inevitable option.

Deploying technologies such as remote radio heads (RRH) enables operators to maximise downlink power and reduce the equipment footprint at the site while minimising noise. Network operators in India are introducing multi-antenna, high transmit power, transmission time interval (TTI) bundling to achieve ultra-long coverage to ensure that the network is available anytime and anywhere.

What type of security challenges are being faced with the use of cloud networks? What measures can be taken to address them?

Despite all several favorable factors, the cloud is beset with many challenges such as:

• Confidentiality
• Privacy
• Data Integrity
• Abuse and nefarious use of cloud computing
• Malicious Insiders
• Shared Technology Vulnerabilities
• Data Loss and Leakage
• Multi-location of Private Data
• Data Transfers Across Borders
• Man In The Middle Attacks
• Service Unavailability

These are countered by effectively implementing architecture security, data security, usage of ‘Intrusion Detection System’, ‘Mirage Image Management System’, employing ‘Client Based Privacy Manager’ to reduce the risk of data leakage , ‘Transparent Cloud Protection Systems’ and filtering techniques to sanitise the user inputs.

Another effective measure is to monitor environment for unauthorised changes/activity, and promote strong authentication and access control for administrative access and operations. Apart from this, few other useful steps include  enforcing service level agreements for patching and vulnerability remediation, and conducting vulnerability scanning and configuration audits.

Meanwhile, implementing strong Application Programming Interface (API) access control,  encrypting and protecting integrity of data in transit, and analysing data protection at both design and run time can help protect the cloud. Other good counter measures are to implement strong key generation, strict storage and management, and destruction practices.

As technology improves countermeasures are also improving to provide utmost security to the customers. The security service providers must be many steps ahead of the hackers and cybercriminals in this field.

How has been the uptake of "Internet of Things”? What factors will drive its adoption in the Indian market?

A survey recently conducted by Tripwire disclosed that the number of installed Internet of Things (IoT) devices will reach 28 billion by 2020 which will deliver global economic value add of $1.9 trillion. Also, according to MarketsandMarkets, the market size of global machine to machine (M2M) connections is expected to reach $35.16 billion by 2020, at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.57 percent between 2015 and 2020. Among cellular M2M connections, the highest number of connections is expected to be of 3G connectivity, followed by 2G and 4G connectivity. The 4G M2M connections are projected to grow at the fastest rate.

Countries that were the early adopters of IoT technologies include Japan, Singapore, China, Australia and South Korea. However, other countries such as India, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia are expected to be some of the fastest growing Internet of Things markets in Asia Pacific between 2014 and 2017. Although IoT has started late in India, its adoption has gathered pace and is growing steadily.

Several factors are driving the adoption of IoT in India such as regional governments’ efforts to improve competitiveness in their economies and city planners' efforts to address social demographic challenges in their cities. Manufacturing, infrastructure, retail, transportation, hospitality and education sectors will drive the rapid adoption of IoT in the Indian market in coming years. About 75 per cent of companies from across industries are already exploring IoT, and India is well poised to reap rewards from this nascent but growing market.

How can the government leverage technologies like cloud to achieve its digital inclusion objective and implement Smart Cities project?

The technologies like cloud computing play an important role in providing good governance and good service to the citizens. Since they make the systems transparent and interactive they automatically involve and empower the people. So the objective should be self-empowerment. For instance, in Aadhar, the government can leverage technologies like biometric and Iris scanning to process the large number of applications in a day. They are less intrusive and easy to manage.

Through web-based applications and e-services, government can implement the Smart Cities project much more effectively with less wastage. It can also contribute to energy conservation and green environment. One way of ensuring all stakeholders have access to digital services within a city is to ensure all platforms offering public e-services are open and available to the entire population.

By using a fully integrated open system, which allows application developers within the community to develop software applications for the community based on the demand of the community, all stakeholders in the community can participate on an equal footing. Such an integrated system, when deployed by local government, can provide an open space for government, businesses and citizens to interact at a community level. This would allow each smart city or region to adapt their interaction between stakeholders according to their specific needs and the needs of the city, as voiced or demonstrated through the community platform. This in turn will foster innovation and increased participation from local stakeholders as they reap the benefits of their initial inputs.

The OECD has identified 5 benefits to opening government data for a city, region or country:

1. Improving government accountability, transparency, responsiveness and democratic control
2. Promoting citizens’ self-empowerment, social participation and engagement
3. Building the next generation of empowered civil servants
4. Fostering innovation, efficiency and effectiveness in government services
5. Creating value for the wider economy.

These benefits place a great emphasis upon the need for a city’s governing body to engage with its citizens and listen to their needs and concerns when developing Smart Cities.

Smart Cities commonly deploy online services across different sectors of the city. For instance a city airport will require different e-services to a city hospital.  E-services can include services for the local economy and its development, tourism, the city environment, its energy and transport services, security services, education and health services and so on. In these ways, the government can leverage technologies for the digital inclusion and for the benefit of the society.

What steps can be taken by the government to facilitate research and development in the IT/telecom domain in line with its ‘Make in India’ initiative?

As R&D is the key driver for innovation, invention and economic growth, the Union Government can consider giving the following incentives, as provided by various countries such as Singapore:

• Enhanced tax deduction on expenses incurred on R&D
• R& D incentives for startup enterprises
• Incentive Venture Capital
• Increased R&D Allowance for companies
• Instituting R& D Awards to encourage R&D
• Industry-Academia Collaboration
• Incentive schemes such as product development assistance, R&D assistance, accelerated depreciated allowance, local enterprise technical assistance and business development.

These steps will make R&D an attractive field for the youth to engage, explore and create many new products, techniques, technologies and solutions. This will in turn give a fillip to the ‘Make in India’ Initiative.