Parliament panel calls banks, Google, Apple, Paytm to discuss cyber security issues

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has called representatives of several banks such as the Punjab National Bank as well as global and national tech majors, including Google, Apple and Paytm, next week to discuss issues related to cyber security and rising cases of cyber crimes.

The committee, headed by BJP's Jayant Sinha, has called the representatives of the Punjab National Bank (PNB), Bank of India, Yes Bank and Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) on July 4 to take oral evidence on "cyber security and rising incidence of cyber/white collar crimes".

On the same day, it has separately called representatives of tech majors One97 Communications (Paytm), Flipkart, Google and Apple on the same issue. 

Cyber crimes have become an increasing threat with savvy online operators resorting to various tricks to defraud people of their money. The issue of cyber security and rising incidence of cyber crimes was at the centre of deliberations at a meeting of the panel held earlier this month too as experts from the industry were quizzed by lawmakers about various facets of unlawful activities, including fraud loan applications.

The issue of fraud lending apps, which have been hitting headlines with rising complaints of people being swindled or forced to pay exorbitant interest rates, was also discussed at the meeting.

The firms represented at the earlier meeting included Chase India, Razorpay, PhonePe, CRED and QNu Labs as well as Nasscom, a premier trade body and chamber of commerce of the tech industry in India.

The parliamentary committee includes P Chidambaram, Sougata Roy, Sushil Modi, Amar Patnaik, among others.