Alvin Toffler once said that “Yesterday violence was power, today Wealth is power and tomorrow Knowledge will be power”. Paraphrasing Toffler, since technology is the common thread in all this, I would say that “Technology is power”. One of the most prominent of pervasive technologies today is cyber technology. On the one hand, the cyber world is a great enabler for good governance, and assures speedy and reliable access to and delivery of data and information. At the same time, there is vulnerability to attacks. The impact of such attacks on critical infrastructures like power, banking, and military communications, could be potentially devastating. An organization working towards the goal of securing the cyber infrastructure of our nation is hence very vital. With this goal in mind, the idea of setting-up the Society for Electronic Transactions and Security (SETS) was mooted by Late President Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, when he was Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Government of India and was implemented later through the Office of the PSA.
The main goal of SETS is to act as a premier organization researching on technologies useful for the Nation’s current cybersecurity needs and also future preparedness and acting as a translational research centre, as a bridge between various players like government agencies, industry and academia. I introduced the term ‘directed basic research’, by which I mean basic research in an area where the knowledge generation would benefit society or industry or country’s strategic interests in the long term. I find SETS also to be an apt example for illustrating the usefulness of ‘directed basic research’ in cybersecurity.
At SETS, cybersecurity research covers applications, network, and information security, as well as disaster recovery. It boasts of strong research teams working in areas of cryptography and cryptanalysis, hardware security and network security. These are areas which are likely to impact the future of cybersecurity, including quantum key distribution, physically unclonable functions, big data, blockchain and game theoretic techniques.
I am also happy that SETS also advises various government agencies on related matters and provides training in state-of-the-art topics.
It gives me great pleasure in introducing this unique organization to you.
(R Chidambaram)
5th January, 2018
Cyber technology is touching millions of lives every-day, its applications ranging from banking transactions to top secret military communications. It is obvious that securing such vital data and communication is very important. SETS was founded with this goal in mind. The challenges were few and small those days, but have become huge and ever-growing today. SETS is working on solutions for such cybersecurity problems which are of national importance.
SETS has a dedicated group of scientists working in areas of cryptology, hardware security and network security. It is working in niche areas related to cybersecurity like impact of quantum technology to security, usage of machine learning techniques for solving network security problems and coming up with ideas for securing hardware devices using novel ideas. Surrounded by organisations like IMSc, IIT, C-DAC and DRDO, it works with them in certain areas of common interest.
SETS is building state-of-the-art infrastructure in terms of labs and trained manpower for designing and implementing cybersecurity solutions. Scientists are involved in research and development of such ideas and building prototypes. While SETS is majorly involved in looking inwards in building such capabilities, it also liaises with other organisations such as IIT, IISc, IGCAR, BEL and ECIL in areas of common interest. The ideas such as setting-up of a “Walk-in Cyber Security Education and Research” (WICSER) Lab would connect SETS to other R&D labs, Industry and user organisations and with a strong association with academic institutions.
The idea of building such an organisation working exclusively on cybersecurity issues was conceived by Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, when he was the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. The idea was given shape when my predecessor Dr. R. Chidambaram who formulated three guiding principles ‘Directed Basic Research’, ‘Translational Research’ and ‘Coherent Synergy’ for SETS to work in a unique and effective way. This is the right time for SETS to scale up its efforts and generate usable cybersecurity solutions and contribute to the society.
I am confident that SETS will play an important role in developing scalable and efficient solutions to address the cybersecurity needs. It gives me immense pleasure in introducing this unique organisation to you.
(K. VijayRaghavan)
31st July, 2018
