Fraud from BPO employees: From Times of India, is it a process issue or a system issue?

An employee of HSBC’s BPO in Bangalore was charged with stealing data of its customers in the UK. The employee, who has been suspended and is now absconding, stole data relating to credit cards and passed it on to co-fraudsters. (This is from times of India)

I wonder how systems do allow this. I’ve been work with customers systems from past 5 years, with access to their live data. At any given point of time, if there were loopholes in the system, we have raised an emergency and plugged them. FI data is sancto sanctorum to customers, I’ve experienced this personally. After SOX has come into picture it has become even more important. In such a situation, how could you have data of a customer open to a BPO employee, who could use this information to siphon off about 1.8 crores.

With this i really wonder if my data is secure enough. At this rate of frauds happening, the BPO industry is going to get a big hit below the belt. Already other countries are challenging us for cheaper prices, well now they have another reason atleast.

The question I have here is “Is it a process issue or a System(Technology issue)?”. Detecting a wrong person during hiring is extremely difficult, (we’ll have to venture into Minority Report styles , however the business process in place could be improved/ corrected to stop such acts from happening.

If it is a technology issue, then the person who decided to buy/design the system in such a way is completely to be blamed, for such a myopic view.

In any case, it is a negative publicity for HSBC across the worlds, now other banks would love to wash their linen in public.

The pondering fact here is that with all these technological advancements where are we going? My answer to it is :

If we are as a socitey completely depending on techonology, and not on people process then we are completely wrong. We must always remember People come first, then processes, then technology, not the other way. Otherwise Social Engineering would be a run of the mill occurence.

When I die??

Sometimes it makes me wonder, who am I going to be when I die? What am I going to be remembered as when I die?

I’m not trying to be philosophical, but realistic.

Just a thought will people remember me at all? Will people remember me as a person who lived a good life? Or will somebody atleast one remember me as the one who created a change atleast in his/her life.

Are we chasing a dream non-existent?

Please do give your comments as I would like to discuss with YOU.

SAP Summit 2006

Was present for 3 days at SAP Summit 200(India Subcontinent), a great experience in Mumbai, of meeting customers and partners

Tezaa.com, an experience in Wisdom of the Crowds.

I'm not sure how many have read the book Wisdom of the Crowds, however tenmiles have ventured to prove that it is the wisdom of the crowds.

They have created a unique site called tezaa. 

Here are a few things I discovered there   

- You can start a poll to see what are the latest trends and fads

- You can tag these polls created by you  

- You can search for polls

- Now the cool part, you can launch this poll on your blog, to get a feedback, I love this one man….

Try it and do write back probably it is wisdom of the crowds that work. 

World Environment Day

Yesterday was World Environment Day, what have you done??

Here is my list which I would like to contribute and revisit next year.

a) Make bio-degradable products as much as possible- In my ideas page, I've got a few ideas, make stirrers for tea/coffee/cocktails out of bio-degradable materials, which can be eaten

b) Lesser use of plastic- Try to carry your own cotton bags to Supermarkets rather than ask for plastic bags.DO THIS we are chocking our place with plastic. Try not to buy milk in plastic, walk to the milk booths in your area, a good morning walk with a lot of eye candy for bachelors/spinsters

c) Check for the dustbins in and around your area, do not litter on the sides of the street even if the people from the public works are not available to collect garbage.

d) NEVER throw stuff out of the car/vehicle you are travelling in, collect it and when you stop, chuck it into a dustbin, as my friend Balaji says, develop some patience.

e) Start by using lesser paper- use edocs as much as possible.

f) Here is something which is going to anger the web designers, keep web pages light and clean, more pages would use more electricity to serve. It might look small, but think about the number of pages you wait upon to load at home, how much electricity is consumed.

g) Teach the younger generation more about environment and cleanliness, starting with them might just change the world.

h) Pollute less, use car pool, use the bus, cycle, WALK.

i) Plant more trees whereever you can, I know of a lady who lives in a village in Tumkur, whose whole life was turned by just planting trees on the highway, she has planted so many that even if half of it is chopped out, a lot of greenery is lost in Tumkur highway

j) Visit nearby villages/communities, to see how they live, and try coming up with new ideas, via our technological background to help them meld more with the environment than get out of it.

I believe we can make a change, let us do something.