Why could the BPOs be soft targets?

3 December 2008:

However, these outsourcing companies can be soft targets for the terrorists.

The BPO industry alone employs seven lakh employees who all can potentially access sensitive data.

Therefore, putting them under the scanner is definitely the need of the hour.

Hence, every IT and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company is now stepping up background checks on its employees, to avoid terrorist attacks.
After all, almost 70 per cent of the outsourced work from the US and Europe comes to these back offices in India.

The employees here have access to all the crucial data and operations. If misused, they can hamper the businesses substantially.

Corporates are well aware of this fact. In fact the likes of Infosys have already started beefing up internal security, but they want the government to do much more.