Pune, India, Monday, June 7, 2010

Uniken, a leading technology innovation company, based in Florida (USA) with its Innovation Centre in Pune (India), is in the process of implementing a Secure Internet Banking Solution, powered by its cutting-edge REL-ID℠ technology, for Bank of India’s online retail banking customers.

Sameer J. Ratolikar, Chief Information Security Officer, Risk Management Department, Bank of India, says “Cyber attacks are getting more sophisticated by the day and frauds related to internet banking and online payment transactions are on the rise across the world. While we continue to educate our customers about what precautions to take, Bank of India wanted to implement an IT solution that could empower our customers to protect their own identity online and be able to do banking safely from any computing device without worrying about security”.

“Today, two-factor authentication is not enough – the customer should also be given some means to authenticate their bank’s website in order to stop the phishing attacks. In fact, the ideal security solution should protect the customer from all known threats and allow him/her to bank even from an unsecure PC”, said Nanjundeashwar Ganapathy, Chief Technology Officer, Uniken. “REL-ID℠ protects customers from internet fraud and identity theft by setting up a secure communication channel between the users’ PC and the banks’ servers, and provides a secure browser with secure desktop, that can protect the customers against phishing, pharming, Man-in-the-Middle, Man-in-the-Browser attacks, spyware, malware, key-loggers, screen-scrapers, Trojans and so on”.

Uniken’s secure banking solution – TruBank℠, based on two-factor, mutual authentication at the network level, was subsequently deployed by Bank of India (one of the largest public sector banks in India) and system-integrated by HP. Dr. Pat Shankar, Chief Scientist, Uniken and advisor to US Dept. of Defense elaborates on this disruptive technology, “We do protocol-level authentication of both the customer and his access device before providing access to the bank’s servers. An encrypted private tunnel (over and above the SSL channel) is then established over which all the data can then be securely transmitted. The REL-ID℠ Mutual Authentication and Encryption Protocol (RMAP) ensures that the customer only connects to the Bank and nobody else, much like an on-demand private network. And this solution complies with most of the compliance requirements issued by various regulatory agencies across the world”.

Bank of India recently initiated the deployment of this technology in phases, and thousands of customers all across India have been successfully migrated to this new solution. Once complete, chances are that such a large-scale implementation of this cutting-edge technology might be a pioneering and game-changing event in the industry. “Staying ahead of the technology curve is critical today when it comes to providing security. As attacks become more sophisticated by the day, innovative solutions and the end users’ eager acceptance will be the key to success – something that had been the norm in the developed economies can now be seen in the Indian scenario,” concludes Sanjay Deshpande, Chief Innovation Officer, UNIKEN.

Read More about REL-ID

Pune, India, Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Uniken, a leading technology innovation company and Center for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), an initiative of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad – one of the top ranking b-schools globally, have joined hands to create the first technology innovation and entrepreneurship program of its kind in India.

“This program, called Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Labs (TIEL), is targeted primarily at engineering colleges and aims to provide budding innovators an ecosystem for developing their innovations and commercializing them”, said Sanjay Deshpande, Chief Innovation Officer, Uniken. “TIEL is based on Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT, USA) FABLAB concept. Incidentally, the first one to be set up outside the MIT campus was at Dr. Kalbag’s Vigyan Ashram in Pabal, near Pune. TIEL would assist innovators in first shaping their ideas around a problem they have identified, and then developing a unique solution from those ideas, that resolves that problem. This Lab would further assist these innovators in prototyping that solution and formulating a business plan or case study around the same.”

The Business Innovation Center of Uniken would then take over the solution and explore the models for commercializing the innovation along with the innovator or entrepreneur. Those who wish to partner and explore this avenue would be provided mentoring and support by the TIEL program, ably guided by the leading names in the technology and innovation space in India.

Speaking on the launch of this program, Pranay Gupta, Co-CEO of CIIE, elaborated that “The importance of innovation in India cannot be over emphasized. Developed countries today are already looking at India as the next generation innovation lab. TIEL is an opportunity for educational institutes to start developing the innovation mindset amongst its students. Both Uniken and CIIE are committed towards developing an innovation ecosystem in India and we will leverage our respective expertise in running this program.”

Innovation is no longer constrained within organizations. Enterprises have realized that to accelerate innovation, they need to be open to ideas from outside. Uniken works with leading organizations to identify critical problems and create innovation projects out of them. These innovation projects once solved have applicability for the entire industry. The innovators can raise capital since there is a business case for the idea.

Leading corporates in India such as Tata communications, Tata Teleservices, Yes Bank to name a few have dedicated innovation teams that constantly scout for ideas.

Uniken partners with various institutes, individuals and organizations for jointly working on new and innovative ideas. Feel free to get in touch if you have the next killer innovation idea or if you need help with something while innovating.

Vigyan Ashram is an organization that shares our innovation ideology (www.vigyanashram.com). They have developed a LED based low-cost lighting solutions for rural areas.