Tuesday, 2nd july, 2013

HEADLINES

• India pakistan exchange list of prisoners in jail
• India's first navigation satellite soars to success

NATIONAL NEWS

• Cyber security plan to cover strategic millitary, government and business assets
  • The Indian government’s Cyber Security Policy — to be unveiled on Tuesday — will have a wide reach, with a National Nodal Agency being set up which will cover and coordinate security for all strategic, military, government and business assets.
  • The policy, however, plans to “create national and sectoral level 24x7 mechanisms for obtaining strategic information regarding threats to ICT infrastructure, creating scenarios for response, resolution and crisis management through effective, predictive, preventive, proactive response and recovery actions”.
  • There is a clear recognition in the policy that, apart from India’s IT, technology and telecommunications services, large parts of financial & banking services, airline & transportation services, energy and healthcare assets are not only owned by the private sector but, in fact, remain vulnerable to cyber-attacks, both from state and non-state actors.
  • The policy lays out 14 objectives which include creation of a 5,00,000-strong professional, skilled workforce over the next five years through “capacity building, skill development and training”. The document identifies eight different strategies for “creating a secure cyber eco-system” including a designated “national nodal agency to coordinate all matters related to cyber security”. The policy discusses the need for “creating an assurance framework” apart from encouraging open standards to “facilitate inter-operability and data exchange amongst different products or services”
  • There is in place a plan to operate and strengthen the national Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) to operate 24x7 and to act as a nodal agency for all efforts for cyber security, emergency response and crisis management, as an umbrella agency over CERTs.
  • One of the key objectives for the government is to secure e-governance services where it is already implementing several nationwide plans including the “e-Bharat” project, a World Bank-funded project of Rs. 700 crore.
  • A crucial aspect of the policy is building resilience around the Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) by operationalising a 24x7 Nation Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC). The Critical Information Infrastructure will comprise all interconnected and interdependent networks, across government and private sector.

• ICANN suspends closed generic top level domain bids
  • The Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN) has put on hold a controversial decision to allot closed generic Top Level Domains (gTLD) to applicants. Governments and activists had feared that allotting such generic domains would lead to a global corporate monopoly over the World Wide Web, by claiming exclusive rights for domains such as.book or .beauty.
  • Last week, a newly reconstituted gTLD committee paid heed to the objections raised by ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee, which had in April pointed out several problems in the process of handing out gTLDs under a “single registrant” business model.
  • This differs from the regular business model for TLD names like .com or .org where the domains names are then resold to other users in an open market on first come, first served basis. Under the single registrant model, companies like Amazon and Google could own exclusively .book or . cloud , both generic name strings, thus paving the way for monopolistic branding.

• India's first navigation satellite soars to success
  • India’s first dedicated navigation satellite, the IRNSS-1A, developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation, was successfully put in orbit
  • The launch vehicle, PSLV-C22, bearing the 1,425-kg navigation satellite, blasted off the launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre
  • The IRNSS-1A is the first of the proposed seven satellites in the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System. Apart from India, its benefits would extend to a range of 1,500 km in the region.
  • With a mission life of 10 years, it will deliver applications ranging across terrestrial, aerial and marine navigation, disaster management, tracking of vehicles, guiding hikers and travellers, and visual-voice navigation for drivers.
  • The PSLV-XL used for the launch does not directly transfer satellites into a geosynchronous orbit. Instead, it puts the satellite into an interim sub Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (sub-GTO), from where thrusters are used to push the satellite into geosynchronous orbit.
  • Once it has been injected into the preliminary orbit, solar panels of the satellite are automatically deployed and the Master Control Facility at Hassan, Karnataka, takes over the control of the satellite — from the initial orbit raising manoeuvres to the final placement in the circular geosynchronous orbit.

OPINION/EDITORIAL

• Article on the attapady tragedy
• Article on the Banihlal quazigund rail netword
• Article on the Nepal's left turn
• Article on social intergration
• Editorial on supreme court
• Editorial on WHO