Sebi to beef up IT team for probes, fighting cyber attacks

To strengthen its technical capabilities including for probes, Sebi is planning to beef up its team of officers by hiring IT experts to develop data mining and intelligence tools, as also to check cyber attacks.

These officers will develop data analytics and business intelligence tools, and also manage internal IT security and audit systems to guard against data loss and theft.

Besides, they would also analyse various technology- related needs of Sebi and help implement the projects following issuance of new guidelines including from the government, CVC and the regulator itself.

The markets watchdog is looking for young engineering graduates, or post-graduates in computers application for these roles, with prior experience in related fields.

The proposed hirings come at a time when Sebi has identified technology as a key area of focus for its policy initiatives during the fiscal 2015-16, beginning next month.

In its last meeting, Sebi's board approved proposals for an "extensive and integrated use of technology to facilitate and further ease the investing process in the securities markets".

Besides, Sebi would tap the social media in a big way for enhancing investor awareness and education, while it plans to further streamline the enforcement process to ensure uniformity in its approach and improve the efficiency of enforcement proceedings.

The role of the new officers, to be part of Information System stream at Sebi, would also include application development and database administration.

They will also develop and maintain applications for business process management tools, ERP applications and portal technologies, XBRL/XML reporting methodologies, as also data and record management systems.

Their internal IT security and audit functions would include protection against "loss, theft, cyber attack" on Sebi's services, applications, databases and strengthening the investigation team with technical capability.

They will also help on Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning (DR-BCP), by ensuring minimum disruption or downtime in Sebi's services, databases and applications in the event of any disaster.

On data centres, infrastructure and networks, they would ensure "optimum utilisation and maintenance of Sebi's infrastructure, data centre, IP Phone, networking, equipment and provide efficient complaint redressal".