The Department of Telecommunications has launched trustedtelecom.gov.in, a portal for telcos to implement the National Security Directive on Telecommunication Sector, essentially to prevent the use of Chinese tech in Indian telecom networks. The Union Cabinet had approved the directive in December 2020. This is how the government said the portal would work in a press release: Trusted Products are products whose critical components and the products themselves are sourced from Trusted Sources. The TSPs will be provided access to log into the Trusted Telecom Portal and indicate the telecom products and the vendor from whom they intend to procure the products. The details of these vendors, the products, their critical components and their sources are then populated into the portal by the TSPs and respective vendors who will also be provided access to the portal. An assessment is made of the vendors and the sources of the components to determine Trusted Sources and Trusted products which are then intimated to the vendor concerned and the applicant TSPs to make their procurements. — DoT The portal was developed by the Centre for Development of Telematics, and the directive is administered by the National Cyber Security Coordinator. "Recent years have seen a dramatic rise in cyber-attacks, intelligence gathering and influence operations over the internet by threat actors. With the increasing use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the range of possible offensive measures by various actors using telecom network will continue to increase manifold," the directive explains. While new equipment will need…
