BPO staff need ethical training: Poll

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New Delhi: Even as the Indian BPO industry grapples with the pitfalls of a sting operation by British TV channel Channel 4, a Forensic Accounting Services agency claims the industry has been facing "repeated security failures” and “shocking data protection breaches” thanks to three inherent problems.

The main reason behind such incidents is not lack of information security norms, but lack of whistle-blowing policies, Indiaforensic Consultancy Services (ICS) says, adding that the BPO industry has become vulnerable to such practices due to the lack of fraud response plans and ethics training to the employees.

On Thursday night, Channel 4 aired a sting operation showing two Indian middlemen selling personal and confidential financial information of UK citizens they allegedly obtained from Indian call centres.

A study conducted by ICS's founding promoters Mayur Joshi and Pradeep Akkunoor, says there is an urgent need for whistle-blowing policies in the industry.

"The focus of information security standards remain at the process and infrastructure levels, and rarely do they deal with the 'people' aspect of security," the ICS study suggests. "The real expertise in drafting whistle-blowing policies, fraud response plan etc rests with anti-fraud professionals like fraud examiners," they say.

With such a massive growth in the industry, incidents of fraud were bound to occur and the industry has been hit by some serious fraud charges in recent years, because of which it has been under the scanner for sometime now.

BPO employees have been accused of selling personal and confidential financial information of UK citizens to those willing to pay a price. There have been instances of employees selling bank account and credit card details of customers and even sharing of personal details like phone numbers etc.

Yet the industry doesn't even have a defition as to what constitutes a fraud. As per the ICS survey, "most call centre employees would treat frauds just like any other complaint."

"Fraud means that social security numbers should not be noted but I have seen many employees noting it; even our boss notes them down sometimes, so to whom we are supposed to report the fraud,” a BPO employee was quoted as saying in the survey.