Govt wants tough new norms for client data of telecom firms

The union home ministry has asked the telecommunications ministry to ensure that service providers digitise their customer application forms (CAFs) in a time-bound manner and that the scanned data should be maintained in duplicate.

This follows the loss of 20 million CAFs at the Ahmedabad warehouse of an agency to whom the telecom service provider had outsourced the task of maintaining the forms. Only eight million forms had been scanned and data relating to 12 million subscribers, dating back from 1996, had been wiped out.

According to a news agency report, central security agencies had taken a serious note of the destruction of 12 million CAFs containing details of the subscribers of Idea Cellular at the warehouse of its outsourcing partner in Ahmedabad in February. The security agencies described it as a security lapse and called for more stringent guidelines relating to the maintenance of client data.

The outsourced firm was also privy to the queries by law enforcement agencies of suspect subscribers, which was also a security lapse, the report to the home ministry said.

The home ministry has for long been urging the telecom ministry to ensure that cellular phone service providers maintain the CAFs and check the credentials of those applying for services. In the past, many telecom service providers were accused of not maintaining the records properly, especially in the case of pre-paid consumers.

In some cases, terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India were known to have obtained pre-paid SIM cards by providing bogus identification details. A few months ago, many service providers had sought original documents from pre-paid subscribers to ensure that their records were in order.

The telecom ministry will now insist that telecom service providers digitise the CAFs – which contain key data about the customer – and even maintain duplicate records. Similarly, the physical documents should be stored in a fire-proof warehouse.

The home ministry has also said that high-precision scanners must be used to ensure that all details are captured.