Time Stamping with IST Can Help Crack Cybercrimes

All digital transactions being carried out in India could soon have to timestamp with Indian Standard Time (IST). The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) – the official timekeeper of IST – has signed an agreement with the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) to establish a nationwide network for time stamping and time synchronization and to ensure traceability of time signals.

The new system is expected to particularly help security agencies in dealing with cyber crimes by making it easier for analyzing and correlating cyber events particularly in the context of increasing network speeds. In addition, it is expected to help improve the telecom network efficiency by reducing packet loss through a better synchronized digital network.

Dr Girish Sahni

There is a need for the time set on Indian telecom networks to be in IST zone to help uniquely identify users or subscribers of the network on tracing of the IP address and other parameters, explained Dr Girish Sahni, director general of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Presently, it is not possible as telecom and internet service providers take their reference time from different sources such as GPS from GNSS and these do not do not have the traceability with IST.

Dr D. K. Aswal

NPL director Dr D.K. Aswal said time stamping and time synchronization network would be made up of one-time synchronization centre for each of the 22 licensed service areas (LSAs) of DoT.  These centres would provide synchronization pulse in Indian Standard Time to telecom and internet service providers served by the respective LSA. In the first phase, four metro LSAs would be covered and in the second, the balance service areas.

Member (Technology) in DoT, Mr Prabhash Singh, said the network will, among other things, help in reducing the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) call drops, and improve the quality of services of the network, voice and video. “The time standardization will help to curb cyber crimes and will also help to identify and correlate the various digital financial transactions”.

Since the accuracy of time depends upon the distance between the time synchronization centre (the reference source) and the location of the telecom and internet services, stratum-1 time synchronization centres would be established at all the 22 LSAs, according to an official press release. (India Science Wire)

By Sunderarajan Padmanabhan

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