InfoSecurity

Jun 23, 2006
ClearTrail Enters India

NEW DELHI -- ClearTrail Technologies, the leading provider of lawful interception products and solutions, recently entered the Indian market. Having been involved in this field for over five years, and after having successfully worked with clients in Europe and the Middle East, ClearTrail has now entered the Indian market with its suite of products for specific requirements for this part of the globe.

ClearTrail provides pioneering and innovative software and hardware based security solutions. These solutions intercept and analyse data and voice communications across millions of connections, to deliver early warnings and relevant intelligence that help take quick mission-critical decisions for law enforcement agencies (LEAs).

ClearTrail communication monitoring solutions are extensively used by a myriad of government departments that need a way to search out immediate threats as well as uncover unlawful communications. The products are intended for use only in countries where such lawful interception to be conducted by law enforcement agencies on the basis of government authorization is permitted.

Convergence Plus met Manohar Katoch, director, business development, ClearTrail Technologies, to know what made the company enter India at this point of time. Excerpts from the interview.

Convergenec Plus: What is "lawful access"?

Manohar Katoch: "Lawful Access" is warrant-driven access to content of communication or network of a service provider. With court orders, law enforcement agencies have the right to access private conversation of a target.

CP: ClearTrail recently entered India. What made you foray into this part of globe at this point of time?

MK: ClearTrail has been closely following the Indian market requirements for some time. The Indian market requirement earlier was more reactive toward intelligence gathering, and it is only recently that law enforcement agencies have started looking toward a more detailed and comprehensive approach. The has been due to the rise in instances of data theft and confidentiality breach, especially in businesses like BPOs and IT companies that are heavily data and network dependent.

CP: ClearTrail has been involved in this field for over five years with clients in Europe and the Middle East. How different are the needs of the Indian market vis a vis rest of the world?

MK: India needs an enhanced regulatory compliance system in place for lawful interception of communication, just like in the US and various European countries. Under such laws, an early warning and monitoring system can help law enforcement agencies avoid security threats and can prevent vital information being sent from an enterprise network, which helps a company maintain its data security and avoid a loss - financial or competitive - in the market.

CP: How is a customer's privacy protected under lawful access legislation?

MK: Once the appropriate laws similar to CALEA (US) and ETSI (EU), which are related to electronic surveillance obligations of telecom carriers, are instituted in India, lawful interception and access to communication will ensure that innocent bystanders are not harmed. ClearTrail's solutions ensure compliance to court orders thereby assuring peace of mind of all involved.

CP: What is data preservation? How is it different from data retention?

MK: Data preservation refers to the technique of preserving data for archive purposes by electronically storing it over DVDs, tape drives, etc.

Data retention refers to retaining personal data related to telephone calls, e-mails, chats, credit card information, website browsed, etc. and providing access to Law Enforcement Agencies for criminal investigations, whenever required.

CP: What are your introductory products, and how do you plan to position them in the marketplace? What aspects of your technology will be particularly appealing to dealers, installers and consumers?

MK: ClearTrail Technologies employs some the best professionals in the industry and is equipped with unmatched R&D capacity to build scalable communication interception solutions with global competencies. Our comprehensive, integrated suite of interception, monitoring, and analytic solutions helps communication service providers, law enforcement, and government agencies worldwide to counteract the exploitation of today's communication networks, fight terrorism and organised crime.

ClearTrail solutions for Law enforcement

ClearTrail's pioneering and path-breaking software and hardware lawful interception solutions range from portable handheld units to remote surveillance solutions, and carrier-class systems for large deployments. The products cover the entire gamut of applications - from mobile units for field surveillance to carrier-class systems for ISP deployments, thus offering:

• Countrywide surveillance of high-speed enterprise and carrier networks like GPRS, VSAT, etc. across a variety of media types;
• Field surveillance of voice and data from hundreds of cyber cafés;
• Portable handtop surveillance of wired and wireless networks;
• Passive, lawful interception of GSM-based mobile communication;
• MMS, SMS and GPRS.

Our products intercept and analyse data and voice communications across millions of simultaneous connections, to deliver early warnings and rapid intelligence that enables informed decision making on business-critical and mission-critical issues.

ClearTrail Business Intelligence Solutions

Conventional network security measures help prevent external threats but fail to consolidate attacks from within, which have serious and devastating consequences.

Organisations have tremendous losses due to information leakages by employees and associates. In view of outsourcing trends and recently reported events of customer information theft by employees, extrusion prevention and insider threat management has turned out to be a mandatory requirement.

ClearTrail Technologies is dedicated to providing network security analysis products that safeguards electronic property by correlating and analysing Internet communications. ClearTrail suites of products provide an unparalleled security to business-critical information and enforce data security and privacy policies automatically to monitor, filter and restrict the confidential data over multiple exit points across enterprise networks.

CP: What business intelligence solutions do you offer? How do these ensure the safety of vital internal information in an organisation?

MK: ClearTrail has developed InfoTrail, a pioneering extrusion detection and insider threat management system. InfoTrail enforces data security and privacy policies automatically to monitor, filter and protect confidential data from internal threats over multiple exit pointes across enterprise networks.

This state-of-the-art product provides a unique ‘What You See is What They Saw’ capability, enabling near-real time, and near-real life reconstruction and replaying of targeted communication - be it data, voice or video.

CP: What do you see as the next emerging issue that people should be paying attention to in the market?

MK: In view of the strong outsourcing trend and recently reported events of customer identity theft in India, we see a lot of potential in the network security applications. We need to align our systems in accordance with global network security standards, to serve our customers better. Our conventional systems are not effective in the contemporary information driven world. We need to graduate to the next level to deal with changing requirements. I believe we need to focus on the reducing the reaction time to an intelligence breach situation in addition to identifying techniques to beat encryption and creating smart data archive and analysis tools.