BPOs say just few rotten apples

New Delhi: The Indian BPO industry seems prepared to take on its stride the challenges posed by the relentless campaign in the Western media about the security risks Indian call centres pose to the customers, especially on the possibility of leakage of confidential financial information.

While industry leaders admit that the 'rotten apples' detected in sting operations conducted by British newspapers and TV channels are a reality, they also assert that the industry is already aware of these risks and the checks and balances are already in place to tackle the problem.

India's National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom, has taken the lead in assuring the world that the outsourcing industry is not as weak as it is sought to be made out, and that a system is already in place to deal with such issues. The association says it will work with the police authorities to investigate the claims made in the Channel 4 programme.

Nasscom is understood to have sent a representative to London to manage the fallout of the Channel 4 sting operation, which is scheduled to go on air on Thursday evening.

The software association has also asked the UK broadcaster to hand over information from its documentary about alleged financial data theft at call centres in India.

Nasscom has questioned the 'verifiability' of such sting operations, where monetary inducements are provided.

Channel 4 claims its undercover investigation spanning over 12 months has found that personal customer information, including credit card numbers, passport details etc, is being stolen from call centres in India and sold in the black market. The investigators allegedly found out that middlemen are offering bulk packages of tens of thousands of credit card numbers for sale.

"These operations sometimes go beyond uncovering wrongdoing and actually induce criminal activity that is then recorded and aired. In this particular case, one of the alleged criminals has stated that the data he offered for sale was fake," Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said.

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International financial crime experts says this kind of incidents could have happened anywhere.

"It could have been in Philippines or China or even UK or the US. Criminal minds are not a cultural or regional issue, they are a global issue," bbc.co.uk quoted Riten Gohil -- an expert in international financial crime -- as saying.

"Because a large number of British jobs have been outsourced to India in the past few years, this animosity in Britain (against India) is natural. Hence, the general lack of trust in Indian society," he told BBC.

This is the fourth such instance when Indian BPO industry's integrity has come under a cloud. In June last year, British tabloid The Sun had claimed its undercover reporter had managed to buy personal bank account details from an IT worker in Delhi.

In two other instances, three former employees of Indian BPO firm MphasiS had been arrested for allegedly siphoning off $300,000 from Citibank customers after stealing account details while working at an offshore call centre and a worker at HSBC's Bangalore call centre was arrested on suspicion of selling confidential bank account details of UK customers to fraudsters.

While the Channel 4 sting has indeed shaken the entire industry, at the same time they are confident that it is just a passing phase and there will not be any long-lasting impact on the outsourcing business as a whole.

"British banks or financial houses are outsourcing from India not because they love India. It is their financial compulsion which has forced them to hide off certain work. Globalisation is here to stay. Instead of giving a bad press, it will be better for everybody to work more aggressively to protect data," a senior management-level official with a BPO firm told ibnlive.com. India does banking transactions at a substantially lower price at about 40 per cent lower than the US, he pointed out.

The business process outsourcing industry is here to stay, other industry leaders claim. And the industry has the potential to process up to 30 per cent of all US bank transactions by 2010. It currently does around 8 per cent of it.

They also point out that while all these scams have primarily been associated with banking-related outsourcing sector, Indian BPO industry today covers many more areas apart from banking. And this guarantees the long-term viability and sustainability of the industry, they say.