OUTSOURCING-A way to the future

The present economy era, characterized by widespread technological growth and advancement in communication systems, has considerably shrunk the distance between the two ends of the globe. In a scenario where the geographical barriers have been surmounted by technical progress, the concept of outsourcing has witnessed a boom and has become a trend in the business industry. With a view to adapt to the market pressures in a highly competitive economical set-up, the business entities are increasingly focusing at availing the modernized and developed business strategies among which outsourcing has proved to be one of the most efficient support systems.

With the legal industry gaining momentum and striving to stay ahead in the highly competitive and global marketplace, legal process outsourcing has been recognized as a compelling business strategy to achieve the business objectives. The increasing drift towards outsourcing of legal work has been triggered by the endeavour of the legal entities to concentrate on their key areas and delegate the back office work to skilled and expert workforce thus preventing the diversion of their human resources to non-core areas.

Apart from facilitating high quality and organized product by skilled workforce, outsourcing has many other advantages which help companies in increasing their time efficiency and boosting economic growth. The fact that it has helped the companies gain a competitive edge in a highly competitive global scenario has made it a lucrative and viable business strategy. Outsourcing non key tasks like legal research, document review and writing on a project-to-project basis proves cost-effective as it reduces labour costs and enables the in-house counsel of the law firms to focus on their major legal issues. Further, the availability of skilled labour force at internationally competitive rates compels the legal establishments to get their work done cost effectively through globally talented workforce.

Outsourcing, though mainly initiated with the allocation of low-end work like transcription, but within a short span of time grew rapidly and witnessed delegation of all kinds of legal support services like legal research, electronic document management, document review, legal writing, data processing, patent search, patent drafting, contract drafting and management, SEC documents etc. to outside agencies.

India is continuously growing as a widely preferred outsourcing location. In the legal industry, where success is principally driven by the cost and efficiency factors, India, as an outsourcing destination provides various advantages to the foreign companies striving to achieve their strategic business objectives.

The resemblance of the Indian legal systems with the legal systems of US, UK, Canada, and a sizeable part of Europe is the main factor that enables the Indian legal professionals to understand the technicalities of a legal proposition in an equally efficient manner as their foreign counterparts. The talented pool of English speaking lawyers in India, familiar with the canons of common law also ensures that the outsourced project is handled with utmost dexterity. Moreover, the significantly lower labour cost in India facilitates the availability of cost-efficient product without any compromise on the quality.

Technological progress has contributed to the growth of legal outsourcing by enabling the legal entities to minimize security risks and safely transfer data through secured networks facilitating safe delegation of tasks to third parties in the other side of the globe. The considerations like the security and confidentiality which earlier led to a misconception of loss of effective control over the processed and finished data have also been taken care of. With the advanced and technical data security measures employed by the outsourcing companies like the non-disclosure agreements, data encryption at various levels and other in-house security features, the issues relating to the protection of confidential information in the outsourcing process have been suitably addressed.

In a dynamic and ever-evolving legal field, outsourcing combines all the benefits for the companies striving for a progressive leap in the legal sphere by increasing profitability. A phenomenon that has led to marked development in the legal area, outsourcing is the future of a progressive and competitive legal industry.

CYBER CRIME-The new threat to the advanced world

Cyber world today is facing the most complicated problem of fighting a crime which is hard to detect and curb in the borderless world. Cyber crime though has its origin in the conventional crime, it is hard to detect because of the highly technical mode of committing it. It is ironical that the advancement in the computer network worldwide, which has brought all the nations together on a global stage, has given rise to such an alarming situation. The law enforcement agencies, unaware of the technological know-how find it hard to nab the criminals involved in the offences related to cyber space. The main categories of cyber crime include hacking, theft of information, data diddling, virus attacks, web jacking, Trojan attacks etc.
Cyber terrorism is another dimension of the cyber crime which has raised serious security concerns world over. It could be understood as planned and intentional hacking of computer programs, data and information. The US economy is extremely vulnerable to cyber crimes as all the functions being performed by the government and financial institutions in the US are highly dependant upon the world of computers.
Cyber terrorists are capable of causing devastation to an unimaginable extent. In the year 1988, a computer virus was created that infected more than six thousand internet servers. In some other part of the world, a group of cyber criminals, posing as phone technicians, rerouted calls by tapping the phone lines. In yet another incident, the services provided by an airport were greatly affected when a hacker halted the airports’ computer system in 1997. These incidents indicate that cyber terrorists have the potential of inflicting damage to the whole community.

There are many criminal groups within the territorial boundaries of United States, which are capable of carrying out destruction through cyber technologies within the country. They have sophisticated websites that provide links to other criminal groups.

Among the various terrorist organizations, Al Qaeda has notoriously held the top most position in the list of U.S. government since many years. Its network has penetrated its roots deep within the humanity across the world. Planned attacks by Al Qaeda prove the use of advanced and sophisticated technology by the organization. Hizbullah is another terrorist organization which functions in the U.S. They are determined to establish Islamic power in the Middle East countries and propagate beliefs and ideas through their website.

The mode of operation of cyber crimes is different from the conventional crimes. Just with a single cyber attack the professional cyber criminals can affect a huge number of network servers and computer systems and can conduct his activities by remaining far away from the place of incident.

Tracking cyber terrorists and prosecuting them is not an effortless procedure. The government of U.S.A has framed the National Strategy for the security of cyber world which includes clauses for the expansion of national cyberspace security response system and procedures for development of training programs.

Co-operation and collaboration from all segments of society – right from home level computer users to extremely crucial government bureaus, is required to combat cyber terrorism. At worldwide level, Interpol, which works as mediator between law agencies of different countries, has served a great role in publicizing the names of cyber terrorists and in tracking of criminals on international scale. Apart from providing intelligence services to the countries associated with it, Interpol is attempting to facilitate data sharing between member nations, conducting operational information analysis, sponsoring training in cyber terrorism.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has set up the National Infrastructure Protection Center which is trying hard to enhance communication levels between different government agencies for curbing cyber terrorism. The principle behind the U.S.A Patriot Act is to detect and scrutinize cyber crimes. This act has given the authority to probe the activities regarding cyber terrorism to Secret Service.

INDIA on the way to attain Energy security

The global scenario has undergone a drastic change in the recent times as the economies are striving to attain high economic growth rates by strengthening their resource base and securing energy supplies. It is apparent that a situation like this could breed resource wars amongst the countries. The Asian region has specially witnessed the increased competition for imports with the increasing reliance on energy resources. Natural gas is rapidly growing as the primary energy source all over the world and in Asia. The Asian countries are increasingly relying on the Middle East as the major supplier of energy.

India, being the world’s sixth largest energy consumer is endeavouring to establish itself as a secure economy and has realized the need for strengthening its power sector to ensure a sustained economic growth.

Technological advancement and accelerated economic growth in India has led the country to join the highly competitive set-up of energy dynamics. One of the biggest consumers of energy in the world, India has started the quest of becoming one of the powerhouses of the future. With a view to meet the challenges of the energy industry, India is making investments in the energy infrastructure to meet the growing demands. Though being the third largest producer of coal in the world, India relies heavily on the oil and natural gas imports due to high energy consumption rate in the country.

An advantageous geographical location of India entitles it to import oil and natural gas from the middle-east countries which are the reservoirs of resources. This not only helps India secure economic growth, but would also facilitate the strengthening of bilateral relations with the neighbouring countries. The task, however, has not been effortless. The hindrance in the pipeline projects has forced India to import natural gas in the form of LNG from countries like Oman and Qatar.

India entered the LNG race in 2004 with its first LNG Terminal set up by Petronet at Dahej on the west coast of the country. Anticipating the fact that the dependence on the oil and natural gas will increase in the coming years, India is emphasizing on the techniques for efficient use of energy and in developing alternative energy sources. At the same time, India is attempting to address the geopolitical concerns which are one of the major obstacles in the smooth imports of oil and natural gas from the neighbouring countries.

With the expansion of new LNG facilities at Dahej and the setting up of new Terminals at Kochi, Dabhol and Mangalore, India is preparing itself for a giant leap in the energy sector. At the same time, maintaining the imports from the countries like Oman and Qatar ensures that India does not lag behind in the race for securing energy supplies. A combination of strategically planned infrastructure, balance of geographical and political concerns and co-operative policies would pave the way for India to develop as a global powerhouse of the future.