The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has set June 15, 2022 as the deadline for telcos to appoint a nodal officer who will be in charge of coordinating with the office of the National Cyber Security Coordinator (NCSC).
The directive further urged the telcos to register on the Trusted Telecom Portal, launched in 2021.
The nodal officers would, typically, coordinate with the office of NCSC and share details about all network gear they plan to deploy in India. The ‘trusted telecom’ portal was also launched in 2021 under the cyber wing of NSCS. The portal acts as a certifying window and network gear suppliers empanelled with the authority can track the progress of approval of their applications.
Earlier, in March 2021, the DoT had issued amendments in telecom licenses for network gear procurements, mandating them to only use equipment from trusted/authentic sources only. Under the process, network vendors or original equipment makers (OEMs) are required to provide detailed active components that go into the network gear along with the place of manufacturing and the company’s headquarters, ownership structure of the organisation and details about the intellectual property rights. Additionally, the network vendors and OEMs also have to also provide similar information about software that powers the equipment.
