The government of India will soon introduce standalone security standards for mobile phones, reports Economic Times. Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of State for Law and IT said during an event that “all mobile manufacturing units” in India will have to comply with certain standards, but he did not expand further on what the standards will comprise of. “We need low-cost cyber technology and low-cost well qualified cyber auditors,” Prasad added during the event. The government will focus on banks, financial institutions, smartphone makers, and make them comply with standards that are yet to be revealed. It will also make cyber security a part of the curriculum in 44 universities and colleges across India, the report said. The development comes shortly after Ministry of Electronics and IT (Meity) asked more than 20 handset makers to submit details about security architecture and standards that they follow for storing customer data. Meity’s direction focused on both domestic and foreign brands like Apple, Samsung, Micromax and especially a lot of Chinese brands like Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, Lenovo and Gionee. Apart from this, the Indian government recently pulled up out Chinese firm Alibaba’s UC Browser for allegedly leaking data of “Indian users” and threatened to ban it if it turned out to be true. Note that in 2015, UC Browser was found to be leaking location, search details, network operator and even mobile device identifier numbers like the IMEI TRAI had recently put out a consultation paper covering the aspect of data protection after the country witnessed a number of coordinated…
