Centre to help decode encrypted data of intel agencies gets nod

Ramanarayanan was speaking to reporters during a curtain raiser event for the 12th convocation of DIAT, which is slated to take place on May 15 and will be presided over by Rajnath Singh.

As the Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh is the Chancellor of DIAT, which is an autonomous body under the Department of Defence Research and Development of the Ministry of Defence.

Rajnath Singh will deliver the convocation address and confer degrees to the graduating students, which also includes serving officers of the Armed Forces and other key government institutions.

Officials said during the convocation, as many 283 students — 261 MTech and MSc students and 22 PhD students — will be conferred degrees. During the curtain raiser event, Ramanarayanan briefed media about various projects and crucial technologies with military applications which the institute is focussing on.

“We are going to establish a Centre of Excellence, as per the directions of the Defence Minister, for Cryptography and Cryptanalysis. This centre will facilitate our intelligence agencies to better decode and decipher data captured from various sources and help them understand what the data means. The Defence Minister has already given in-principle clearance for the centre and will hopefully give his final approval during his visit,” said the DIAT Vice Chancellor.

“We will now be figuring out the funding aspect and whether it will be located in a building or will be a virtual centre of excellence. The DIAT will be the nodal agency for this national- level entity,” said Ramanarayanan.

Cryptography is techniques to secure the communication against the detection by adversaries, cryptanalysis is technologies used to breach the cryptographically encoded or secured communication.

Speaking about how the idea of the centre was conceived, Ramarayanan said, “DIAT’s highest decision making entity, the general body, is chaired by the Defence Minister. In the last general body meeting, the Defence Minister asked us about the futuristic areas we want to work on.” “…We have understood that deciphering encrypted data is a key challenge. We told him that for cryptography and cryptanalysis… there is no consolidated effort. This centre of excellence will serve this purpose.”