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Moumita Bakshi

Craig Mundie of Microsoft feels India must develop IP, stop renting out IQ, and facilitate more VC investment. Excerpts from a chat.

AS Chief Technical Officer of advanced strategies and policy in Microsoft Corporation, Craig Mundie reports to Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Bill Gates, and works with him to develop technical, business and policy strategies for the company.He coordinates and implements aspects of strategies that span multiple Microsoft product groups. His role also extends to working with government and business leaders in Washington, and across the globe to address technology and policy issues on security, privacy, telecommunications regulation, intellectual property and software procurement standards.

During his recent visit to New Delhi, Mundie talked to eWorld on issues ranging from his views on what India needs to do to sustain its competitive edge in IT to the enhanced need for enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights. Excerpts:

What issues are on your agenda for this visit?

I am now coming here about every six months. There is no particular issue as far as this visit is concerned. It is the same set of issues I normally deal with — working with the local Microsoft team, reviewing the state of business and talking about the things that we have to continue to evolve. Besides this, the idea is to spend time with people in the Government on policy matters.

From Microsoft's point of view, are there any policy concerns as far as India is concerned?

There are always a number of things that are of concern. A big focus of our discussions in the last couple of years has been Intellectual Property. As far as the Patent system is concerned, clearly one of the big issues is around enforcement. One has to enforce laws, not just have them.

India is somewhat deficient in the amount of energy and funding devoted to the creation of a cyber police force, which will affect issues of security, privacy and things like spam. Similarly, I think enforcement will have to be enhanced around some of the Intellectual Property issues. Other issues that we talk about a lot are education and infrastructure.

Given the massive reach of the Internet, how is Microsoft addressing security issues?

It will continue to be a battle. What has happened now is that crime exists in both places — the physical as well as the virtual world. Moreover, security issues have moved beyond the realm of intellectual curiosity of teenagers to global criminal activities that exploit security issues within all the systems that are a part of the Internet.

Since our software is the most widely used, it has been the initial target of these activities. But you can also see weaknesses emerging in mobile phones and other devices that are now being exploited. I spoke to a Parliamentary committee in Delhi where I mentioned just how important it is to get on top of these issues early because we have started seeing these things in the US and Europe.

If a population at large starts to worry about their personal safety on the Internet, they retreat into the traditional world.

In a country like India, which is an emerging economy, a large part of the dream of how Government is going to enhance its ability to serve people hinges on their ability to use IT.

If people become afraid to go online, then despite the rollout of e-governance programmes people will hesitate to use them. This brings us back to the same point of not just having laws but enforcing them.

A big issue in the US and elsewhere is identity theft. This is not exploitation of weaknesses in the system but is a socially engineered attack, where the mass marketing reach of the Internet is used to prey on people who are curious.

For instance, in the case of phishing, no security flaw is exploited. We shall and will do more in the technological sense to help people defend themselves against these things. Today, it is difficult to perfect strong identity within the Internet environment and because you do not know whom you are interacting with, you could be fooled easily.

In the case of phishing attacks, criminals masquerade as your bank, inducing you to transact. Microsoft is focused on doing things to provide more in the feature sense, than protection sense, that will aid in identifying who you are dealing with.

In the last 18 months or so, Microsoft has been very active globally in fighting spam. A part of that is the technological approach, where we do aggressive filtering and have systems that exchange information on senders of mail who are known to be sending spam. We are putting mechanisms into the next version of the operating system that will help with this identity question. We are also looking at improvements in the browser environment that will help people manage these kinds of attacks.

moumita@thehindu.co.in

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