Washington has offered the Indian Army a host of high-technology military command and control, and battle communication systems, but the Army’s Corps of Signals indicated today that what is more important is upgrading the existing technology with the help of locally available know-how.The Army’s Signal Officer Commanding-in-Chief Lt Gen Davinder Kumar said to ensure the security of top-secret information, it is imperative that indigenous technology is used.While sidestepping a question on the current level of ‘‘clean’’ information the Army was dealing with, Lt Gen Davinder Kumar said, ‘‘We need to look into new encryption techniques for the information we use. We need to ensure the security of stored and transferred information between two points. That has to be indigenous.’’The Army is working on a comprehensive project to upgrade and expand its current communications, command and control, and battle information infrastructure — the channels through which sensitive information must pass for the land forces to mount attacks or defend assets, especially in the sensitive Western sector.In the past, the Army has had to deal with data theft and ‘‘chipping’’, in which embedded code (in the form of viruses, worms and trojans) planted by ‘‘anti-national elements’’ in Army software copies highly sensitive strategic information and transmits it via other electronic channels to ‘‘adversary countries’’. ‘‘It is not the battlefield we are worried about. We are OK there, but we want to make the nation aware of dangers and the criticalities that need to be guarded. We need reliable networks at the Defence level,’’ Lt Gen Kumar said.
