IT Secretary urges electronic component manufacturers to safeguard national security

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology Secretary S Krishnan recently said that the Electronic component manufacturers should ensure the country's security interests while starting new projects.

While delivering the 10th G Ramachandran Endowment Lecture on 'Building Economic Resilience Through Technology' organised by the Madras School of Economics and The Southern India Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SICCI) Krishnan said the government was opening up on this topic and has been instructing companies to ensure that while designing a project, the country's security interests should be taken care of.

"We spoke about this briefly (in the past) and how cyber security is becoming more and more important. This is something I would especially want the senior citizens, here something we need to be extremely careful about on a day-by-day basis," Krishnan said.

Expanding on this, he stated, "As cyber security becomes increasingly vital, the scale of national risks grows significantly. These risks extend beyond individual concerns to encompass substantial threats at the national level."

"What we advocate is that and what we try to do both within the government is secure by design. Secure by design is something that we have to ensure even from the time that you (electronic component manufacturers) start designing a product. You design it in a way that the country's security interests are taken care of." he said.

Krishnan emphasised the importance of resilience in the supply chain industry, highlighting the need to withstand external factors such as geopolitical risks. He noted that India experienced supply chain constraints during the COVID-19 pandemic. Internationally, the semiconductor chip supply, crucial for various industries, is predominantly controlled by Taiwan.

"If something happens there (in Taiwan) what will happen to the supply chain of the chips? We need to ensure that there are supply chains which are resilient and we have to ensure that geopolitical issues do not append the economy," he said.

On climate change, he said it is another issue that India needs to address along with waste management and natural disasters are others that are of constant challenges.

The Ministry of Electronics is working with a number of other departments to see how the impact of climate change can be reduced, he said.

"The Ministry of Electronics actually works with a number of other ministries, including Renewable energy to see what are the ways in which we can reduce the impact of climate change and optimize production in such a way that the usage of resources comes down and we become more sustainable", he said.