Banning apps will protect Indian economy from being manipulated: Ram Narasimhan, Xebia

As a pioneering IT consultancy company, Xebia delivers high-quality services to cover all aspects of digital transformation. Here, Ram Narasimhan, Global Executive Director, AI and Bigdata at Xebia, talks about the recent Indian government notification banning 59 apps. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: What does the banning of these apps mean?

Ram Narasimhan: The Indian government is responding, considering the pressure being created by China on borders and the significant element of the national security risk of being exposed through software/hardware data being used for impersonation purposes.

Apart from economic impact through digital warfare, the idea is to protect the Indian economy from being manipulated, using datasets obtained from personal phones of key security personals or related entities.

DQ: How would the removal be monitored?

Ram Narasimhan: The apps are still available on the app store as we speak. However, the act will force organisations owning marketplace to suspend the operations of the selected apps.

The same has been witnessed by the app called ToTok for various other reasons. It was officially removed from Google Play Store sighting security risk and compliance issues.

DQ: Would this ban extend to all Chinese invested companies?

Ram Narasimhan: We can't say at this moment whether the warfare will spill over business entities. There are however, likely chances that strict monitoring and governance will be in place to protect the interest of the nation.

DQ: Who are Indian companies in China going to face the reverse heat?

Ram Narasimhan: Any further escalation will jeopardize the Indian IT services firms’ business relationship with Huawei. Many major IT companies will bear the brunt. Also, China has been one of the strong buyers of Indian steel accounting to almost 48%, which will be negatively impacted. Other manufactures running factories and plants in China will be negatively impacted.

DQ: Is this a reaction against the recent cyber-attacks?

Ram Narasimhan: The ransomware attack on NHAI, hack on email servers in the past few years, investment in hardware infrastructure, and 60+ popular digital apps, such as Tiktok, has definitely alerted authorities on being cautious. They have gone through the root cause analysis for the same.

Actions taken by the Indian Government seem measured, and to further restrict the leak of information regarding escalation or negotiations.

DQ: Do these banned apps have any backdoor?

Ram Narasimhan: There is a possibility of copying clipboard, passing on information related to the user, location, and hardware/software, which could be very well used to feed any cyber-attacks or hacks.

There is no analyst report that says backdoor is enabled. We are sure that a certain amount of data, with location details, is generally exposed to the app provider.