U.K. terrorism worries India's IT sector

One of Glasgow’s would-be suicide bombers, Kafeel Ahmed, worked in an IT company in Banglalore. Company managers worry that the company may have been exposed to possible information security risks, and other IT companies in India are now examining their safety procedures. Kafeel, an aeronautical engineer, worked as a senior design engineer for Infotech Enterprises in Bangalore between December 2005 and August 2006.

The company has prestigious aviation clients, including Pratt & Whitney and Boeing for which it carries out outsourced engineering design work from Hyderabad and Bangalore. It now appears that Kafeel, who was associated with al-Qaeda activist, Abbas Boutrab, who planned to blow up planes in the United Kingdom four years ago, was already indoctrinated by the time he joined the Bangalore company, thus making the potential security risks associated with his employment there even more acute.

Industry insiders said the disclosure should lead to a re-examination by companies handling sensitive contracts at their security procedures. Large IT companies make their employees sign an agreement to abide by their security policies and are subjected to several restrictions while at work. Restriction on access to Web sites and a check on the use of e-mail from the office are some of the precautions that the companies already take. Companies say they allow employees access to only relatively harmless data from homes.